Chapter 6: Locked Out

Dinner was a corner table in a closed-off room above the river, and Roan ate like a man with nothing to prove.

He told me about the first locomotive he drove at nineteen, and how it stalled in front of his father.

I told him about learning to read a ledger on my father's knee.

He did not look at his phone once, and when I laughed he watched my mouth.

"You're looking at me like I'm dessert," I said.

"I'm trying to be subtle."

"You're failing."

"I know."

By ten o'clock I had told him about the curb and the tray.

"He let her hand you a glass," Roan said. "And you stayed two years."

"I kept thinking he would notice."

"A man who loves you notices," Roan said. "He doesn't need a speech."

I did not answer, because it was true.

He drove me back to the tower himself, in a black truck with a leather seat that smelled like cedar.

At the Liberty Avenue entrance, under the awning, a man stood in the rain with a cardboard box in his arms.

Colin's shoulders were soaked, and his sandy hair was plastered flat.

The night guard hovered a yard away, one hand on his radio.

"Chair," he said when I stepped out. "He says you'll want to see him."

"Selah." Colin turned. "Please."

Roan had come around the truck, and he stopped a few feet behind me.

I felt him there, quiet and large, not touching me.

"It's all right," I said to the guard. "Give us the awning."

Colin held out the box.

I looked inside.

My grandmother's quilt, my reading glasses, the framed photo of my father on a barge, and the green mug with the chip in it.

"I thought you'd want them," he said. "I went through the apartment. I didn't know what was yours."

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