Chapter 4: The Shop

The Anchor Diner sat next to McFadden Chrome & Auto.

It was a low brick building with a neon anchor in the window and a gravel lot full of bikes.

Dread's mother stitched my forehead at the corner booth.

She was a short woman with a grey bob, flour on her apron, and hands that did not shake.

She had told me her name was Loretta, but that everyone said Lo.

She had not told me to stop crying, and I liked her for that.

"Hold still, honey."

"I'm holding."

"You flinch before the needle gets there. Look at the pie case."

I looked at the pie case. There was a coconut cream going soft under the lights.

"My son says you hit him with a Camaro," she said.

"I did."

"Good. Somebody ought to." She pulled the thread through. "Four stitches. It'll scar thin. You can say it was a bar fight."

Across the booth, my brother sat with his hands flat on the table and a cup of coffee he hadn't touched.

I had not looked at him since the road. I looked at him now.

"There's no diesel shop in Dayton," I said.

Alec shut his eyes.

"Is there?"

"There's a shop. I fix their trucks sometimes." He opened his eyes.

"Bets, I was twenty-two. Dad was sick, and you were working doubles, and I had nothing."

"Wade took me in," he said. "I never meant it to last three years."

"You could have told me."

"You'd have asked me to quit."

"Yes."

"That's why."

Lo tied off the last stitch and bit the thread with her teeth.

"Clint asked about you every Sunday," I said. "Where you were staying and who you worked for. I used to think it was sweet."

Something went across my brother's face and was gone.

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