Page 91 of Roadrunner

I got out of the truck and stood in the driveway until his taillights turned the corner, and only then did I let myself grin, wide and unguarded, the way I hadn’t in longer than I could accurately measure. Arizona at ten o’clock in February smelled like creosote and somebody’s charcoal grill three houses down, and I stood in the middle of it for a full minute before I went inside, because there are certain kinds of happy you don’t want to rush indoors and lose.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Alex

Now

Della called it a small Sunday.

That was what she said when she called Friday evening. Small Sunday. Just us. No club. No extra chairs dragged in from the garage. No Brisco holding court at the end of the table.

Just family, she said.

I didn’t examine the word too closely. I just said we’d be there at four.

The table was set for six when we arrived.

Six. I counted without meaning to. Della. Riley. Me. Arthur. Martina, who’d ridden over with us and never needed a special invitation to family things. And one more.

Addy was in the kitchen when we walked in. She turned around and screamed.

Not a frightened scream. The other kind.

She crossed the kitchen in four steps and wrapped both arms around me and squeezed with the ferocity of a woman who had opinions about the amount of time that had passed and was expressing all of them simultaneously through physical force.

“You absolute nightmare,” she said into my hair.

“Hello, Addy,” I said.

“Years,” she said. She pulled back and held me at arm’s length. “You look amazing. I hate you. I’ve missed you so much.” She pulled me back in. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

She released me. She looked at Arthur, who was standing slightly behind me with the alert expression of someone witnessing a natural event of significant magnitude.

“You must be Arthur,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She looked at him for a moment. Something quick and unexamined crossing her face before she smoothed it over.

“I’m Addy,” she said. “I’ve heard about you.”

“I’ve heard about you too,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “What did you hear?”

He considered it. “That you interrupt stories.”

Addy turned and looked at Riley.

Riley was looking at the ceiling.

She turned back to Arthur. “I prefer to think of it as improving them.”