But this man didn’t have any of my hard edges, didn’t have my build—I was a good four inches taller than him, and he had to be a six-footer if he was an inch. And while he had a good strong build—shoulders hard from working, stomach flat, good muscles in his arms—I could bench press him with one hand tied behind my back.
What I’m saying is I’m a big man. Broad at the shoulder, thick at the hip, but not fat. Not even in life and certainly not in death.
“You’d remember if I lived around here?” she repeated.
“Sure,” Sunshine drawled. “Truck like this isn’t something you see every day.”
There was a beat, a pause where Lu and I both took a minute just to stare at him.
He could have gone for the cheesy line, the pick-up line, told her she had skin like snow and hair like fire. But instead he’d made a crack about the crappy truck.
“Nope,” I said. “Still don’t like you, Sunshine.”
But then something pretty damn rare happened. Lu smiled at him.
I groaned. Whatever caught her interest wasn’t gonna stop here.
“Just picked it up,” Lu said. “Thought I’d get to a shop somewhere along the way and have him checked out. Looks like it’s all going to plan.”
Sunshine chuckled and ran fingers back through those too-long bangs. “Well, then. Let me know where you’d like me to take him, and we’ll get you all set.”
“Fisher Auto come recommended?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s been said it’s the nicest little shop this side of the Mississippi.”
Lu raised an eyebrow.
“Well, my mom said it, so there might be some bias there.”
“I Googled you.”
“Ah. Well, then.”
“Not a single bad review.”
“I’m sure I’ll get one eventually. Can’t please everyone.”
“No, you can’t.” Lu dropped down off of the hood, her boots planting in the dust and gravel. “But then, not everybody deserves to be pleased. I’ll get my stuff.”
“Fisher’s?” he asked.
“Fisher’s.”
Chapter Four
We’d been in every town dug down or sprung up along the Route. We’d seen them rise up slowly like a planted crop, seen them thrive and spread, or falter and crumble down to dust under the hammer of the years.
The big business keeping McLean on the map was the Dixie Truck Stop and café. Built back in 1928, the place had survived storms and disaster and only missed one day serving food and fuel. That was because the place burned down and had to be temporarily located to a nearby house while rebuilding.
It’d changed hands from family ownership some time back, but the restaurant was still standing right in the middle of a big, wide, flat stretch of pavement with room for dozens of trucks. Route 66 and I-55 ran north/south on either side, the truck stop its own island in between.
Directly across from the parking lot stood a little green train depot—one of the two left that had seen Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car rumble past—unremarkable except for a sign marking it as an important place.
Someone had set up a model train store in it. I thought that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Fisher’s Auto, however, wasn’t anywhere near the truck stop. It was on the north side of town, right at the fork in the road between Fisher Street and Route 66. From the look of the place, it was once a home with a barn, and now the barn was an auto shop, which was, much as Mother Fisher had remarked, nice.
The streets were concrete, cracked from hard summers and harder winters, grass growing up in the middle of it wherever it caught root.
