Page 166 of Roadrunner

“Which part.”

“The part where I couldn’t do anything useful except lose a boot.”

I looked at him.

The porch light cut his profile the way Mount Lemmon used to.

“You showed up,” I said. “You moved a service call for a shove. You do the math packet. You lose a boot and still get us there. That’s useful. The rest is just adrenaline looking for a tool.”

He let out a breath.

“False alarm,” he said.

“Practice,” I said.

He looked at Arthur, mouth open, bag still hugged like a second seat belt.

“He’s going to be good at this,” Riley said.

“He already is,” I said. “He’s just loud about the engines.”

We went inside.

I put the bag back in the hall closet myself.

Some jobs you take back because you can.

I slept.

Not well.

Better than the thermostat deserved.

In the morning my back was just a back again.

The baby had made her point.

She would come when she came.

On her own schedule.

Without particular concern for the plans the rest of us had made.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Alex

Now

She arrived on the same Thursday that every temperature record in the Sonoran Desert was shattered.

Not dramatically. Not at a moment designed for arrival. She came the way she would probably do everything, which was on her own schedule and without particular concern for the plans others had made.

Her name was Elena Della Panzolini.

We hadn’t discussed names at length. It hadn’t required length. One evening on the back porch Riley had said Della, and I had said yes immediately, and then he’d said Elena, which had been his grandmother’s name, and I had said yes to that too and that was the whole conversation.

Della cried when we told her.