Chapter 7: Rowena

"You threw gravel at it," I said.

He flinched.

"Mom said you went to a foster family. In Ohio. She said you had a yard."

"I went to an overlook."

He looked at the dark past the guardrail.

Then he walked to his SUV and got in the back without a word.

His driver looked at the Kesterson truck, then at us.

"Leave it," Augustus said through the window. "Just drive."

They pulled out and went up the grade.

"Well," Alastair said. "That's a family reunion."

"Shut up."

"Shutting up."

His men drove the Kesterson truck to a Shardlow yard with its driver zip-tied in his own sleeper.

I drove home and didn't sleep.

At noon on Saturday the Cutter Stop was full.

Every booth, every stool. Saturday is when the long-haul guys come in to eat something that isn't from a gas station.

I was at the counter with my hand wrapped in gauze, eating pie I didn't want.

The room went quiet from the door inward.

A black car sat in the lot, with a driver standing beside it.

A woman came in out of the sun.

Cream wool coat. Pearls. Blond hair cut sharp at the jaw.

She walked between the booths.

Clem stopped scraping the grill.

She took the stool next to mine. She didn't take off her gloves.

Up close, there were lines by her mouth that the TV didn't show.

She looked at my forehead first. Then she made herself look away from it.

"My son came home at three in the morning," she said. "He sat on the stairs and cried. He hasn't cried since he was six."

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