Day Seven I Signed It novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: A Week Is Enough

Colin's POV

We went to the grave on the first, the two of us, at nine in the morning.

Gavin brought white roses.

I brought a thermos of my mother's coffee and two paper cups.

She had put them in my hands at the door.

He cut the stems with his pocketknife and laid the flowers against the stone.

I poured the coffee and gave him a cup.

For a while we stood there drinking it.

"You said you'd answer a question," I said. "What did he do for you? Besides the check."

Gavin looked at the stone.

"Once a year, on my birthday, he parked across from our building," he said.

"He never came up. He sat in the car for an hour and left."

"For how long?"

"Until I was twelve. Then he knocked."

I waited.

"He took me to a baseball game," Gavin said. "He bought me a hot dog."

"He didn't know what to say to me, so he said that. I'm not good at this."

"He said it three times."

"That sounds like him."

"Does it?"

"He couldn't say anything he cared about without saying it three times," I said.

"At my graduation he told me I was a good kid. He said it at the cake, in the car, and again at the front door."

Gavin laughed, and I saw his eyes were wet.

"Tell me about him," he said. "Not the saint. The one you had."

I thought about it.

I had never been asked.

"He whistled when he did dishes," I said. "Always the same two songs, and he got the second one wrong."

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