The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Hat in Hand

The text came at ten past five.

*Truck's in the east lot. I'm not coming in. I just wanted you to know I got here.*

I read it three times in the dark.

Eddie was snoring in the top bunk.

Nate lay in the sleeping bag on the floor, with his headphones on and his face turned to the wall.

I put on my shoes and went down the back stairs.

At the bottom, the stairwell door had a night chain on it, and a frosted glass pane.

There was a shape on the other side of the glass.

It was holding a cap in front of its chest with both hands.

I stood there with my fingers on the chain.

I could have gone back up. It was inside the terms. I decided when and where.

Instead I said through the glass, "How long have you been out there?"

"Since three," Dennis said. His voice came through muffled. "I slept in the truck till it got cold."

"I said you wait for my call."

"I know you did."

"You drove two thousand miles."

"Twenty-three hundred," he said. "I wasn't sure what else to do with myself. I couldn't sit in that kitchen."

I leaned my forehead on the door.

I had spent the summer afraid of that voice, and now it sounded old and cracked and tired.

I thought about twenty-three hundred miles of road, and what a man does with all of it and no answer.

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