Theo pulled out a couple more bills, then slid the pile across. Mr. Gertmann turned his attention back to the TV, now showing a car dealership commercial, as Theo picked through the bowl to make his selections.
“Have a good night, Mr. Gertmann,” I called out, as we started for the door. After a quick survey of the crates, Theo selected one from the middle of the stack, then arranged the remaining ones neatly, how they’d been, the cobwebs barely disturbed. He might have been long-winded, but the boy did have an eye for detail.
“Thank you!” Theo added. Neither of us got a response.
Back in the car, I realized he was beaming. Like, literally grinning ear to ear as he turned the crate in his hands. “This is amazing,” he said. “I mean, seriously. I never would have even hoped to find anything like this.”
I laughed. “It’s a milk crate, Theo.”
“It’s a huge find in terms of Clyde’s backstory!” He shook his head, still smiling, then turned to me. “Thank you, Emaline. Seriously. You just helped me impress Ivy, which is not easy to do. I could kiss you right now.”
I blinked. “Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s really not necessary.”
“I just meant . . . I’m just . . .” He stopped talking, thankfully, as his face flushed pink, then a deeper red. “Sorry. It was just an expression.”
“I know,” I said. He was still pink. “I’m just joking around.”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat, then gave me a smile. “Anyway, it’s just been sort of a hard trip so far. This will help. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
I started the engine and we pulled away from Gert’s, back onto the highway towards Colby. I’d driven a couple of blocks before I said, “So which bracelets did you pick?”
“Bracelets?” A beat. “Oh, right! Yeah, the bracelets. These two.” He held up one with green beads, another with white. “I wasn’t going to buy any. But they looked sort of sad, set up like they were there.”
I kept my eyes on the road ahead, which was dark, no coming traffic. “His daughter makes them. Rachel. She went to school with my sister Amber until she had this accident the summer before eleventh grade.”
“Accident,” he repeated.
I nodded.
“What happened?”
I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “She was riding her bike home from her boyfriend’s one night and got hit by a drunk driver.”
Theo looked back down at his bracelets. “God. That’s awful.”
“It was. The guy that hit her just left her in the road, like an animal.” I cleared my throat. “Went back to his hotel, parked his bashed-up car, then passed out in his room. Didn’t even remember getting behind the wheel when the cops finally tracked him down.”
“He was a tourist?”
I nodded. “She recovered in some ways, but her head injury was pretty severe. She started making the bracelets when she was in rehab. There’s something in the patterns, the braiding, the colors . . . it helps her. Or so her mom says.”
We were coming up to the outer edge of Colby now, where neighborhoods began and lights gradually became more and more visible. I tried to think of all the times I’d driven down this road, coming back home from one place or another. It seemed it was always this time of night, the air sweet and warm whistling through my half-open window, but I knew that wasn’t true. There were winters and falls and springs, too. I just never remembered them.
I was so lost, thinking this, that when I heard a horn give out a long beeeeeep as it passed us, I jumped. Glancing in my rearview, I saw Luke’s truck. I slowed down.
“Everything okay?” Theo asked me.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said, glancing back again. Luke had turned around, was behind now, catching up fast. He flicked his headlights, brights on and off, and I put on my signal, turning into the empty lot of Coastal Federal Bank. A beat after I parked, he pulled up beside us.
“What’s with the beeping?” I said to him, rolling down my window.
“What’s with not answering my text?” he replied, equally annoyed. He leaned forward, looking at Theo and his milk crate. “I thought we were doing dinner.”
“I told you I had to work late.”
“When?”
“When I texted you back?” He shook his head. I sighed, then pulled out my phone to show him proof. There, on the screen, was my response to his message. Unsent.
“Whoops,” I said, holding it up. “It didn’t go through.”
“You don’t say,” he replied. I made a face, which he gave right back to me. “So you were working. Doing what? Delivering milk?”
I just looked at him. “Luke.”
“Actually,” Theo said—as I watched a wave of irritation move across Luke’s face at the sound of his voice—“Emaline was showing me some local places. For our documentary? She took me to this store, where I found this, which references directly some of Clyde’s work. It’s pretty amazing, actually.”
Luke just stared at him for a second, then turned his attention back to me. “I’m going home. Call me later?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
With that, he shifted into reverse and backed away from us. I watched him pull back out onto the road, tires squealing slightly. Then he punched it and was gone.