Mom Abandoned Me to Save Herself novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Overlook Again

"Then ask," I said.

"Not in a parking lot." He pushed off the bumper. "Tomorrow. Give me one day off. And your keys."

I stared at him.

"Nobody drives my rig."

"I know."

"Clem doesn't drive my rig."

"I know that too. That's why I'm asking for it."

I thought about it for a long time, standing there in the pole light.

Then I took the keys out of my jacket pocket and dropped them in his hand.

He looked down at them.

At nine the next morning he was up a ladder in front of the Cutter Stop with a can of red paint.

The new sign had come on a flatbed the week before. Plain white, no letters.

He'd been out there since six.

When I came down, he climbed off the ladder and stood back so I could see it.

CUTER STOP.

One T. Right where the old one was missing.

"The sign guy thought I was illiterate," he said.

I had to sit down on the step.

He had red paint up his right forearm, from the wrist almost to the elbow.

Then he drove my Peterbilt.

He was good. Better than good. He was careful on the curves, and he never once rode the brakes.

"You drive like a lawyer," I said.

"Clem's been teaching me."

"Since when?"

"Since Cumberland. In the yard. At five in the morning, so you wouldn't see."

I didn't ask where we were going. By the time the road started to climb, I knew.

He pulled off where the trees opened up on one side.

The rail. The sky past it. The hawks.

The gravel was new. The two holes Clem put in it were long gone.

He set the brake, and he sat with both hands on the wheel for a minute, exactly the way Clem had.

Then he got out and came around and opened my door.

We stood at the rail. He didn't touch me.

"Your whole life turned here," he said. "A man was told to end you, and he couldn't do it. So this is where I wanted to ask."

He took a small box out of his coat pocket.

He didn't get down on one knee. He just opened it and held it out between us.

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