Semitrucks sped past him, and the world narrowed to the tunnel of his headlights and the thrum of good tires on asphalt.
His phone lit up on the seat. He didn’t have to look to know who it was. Only a handful of people ever called him, let alone this late. And one of them made sure he never slipped through the cracks without a check-in.
He let it ring once. Twice.
He wasn’t avoiding her.
He reached for the phone and thumbed it on. “Hey, Lu.”
“Gabe.” Her voice was warm and bossy, the hug combined with a shove his big sister always gave him. “Please tell me you’re not still at the garage. Jeremy will lose his mind if you keep racking up overtime.”
“I locked up.” His jaw worked, and he made himself unclench it. “Just…driving.”
Silence filled the space on the line, not empty because it was full of her thinking. He could picture his sister, perched on theedge of her couch in loose pants, one foot tucked under her. His big sister who could talk a pit bull into giving up a bone, who’d stood in a sterile hallway while he learned to breathe with ribs that felt like broken glass after he fell off a bucking bronco in his rodeo days.
His sister, who’d pressed an apartment key into his palm and said, “Your place. Your pace.”
Her voice came out soft. “You okay?”
He swallowed. The buzz under his skin didn’t leave, but it eased, like it recognized the true meaning of family. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He choked out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lu. I’m trying.”
“I know.”
She did. He’d give her that. She hadn’t missed a single part of his homecoming, from setting up his new apartment with thrifted finds and clean sheets to making sure he had a stock of good coffee. She texted him silly photos of his niece and nephew and a stupid meme at least once a day.
She’d introduced him to her friends at church and dragged him to a cookout with her husband and kids where he’d stood too stiff and smiled too little. She was trying to make this feel like home to him. She was tryingso hard.
He changed lanes just for something to do. The miles ticked by. “It’s like I’m…crawling out of my skin. The more I tell myself this is normal, the less it fits. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. I know I don’t make any sense.”
“You do.”
He waited for her sigh or a scolding. But she did neither, which was one of her special gifts he appreciated more than he could ever voice.
“You’ve been through hell, Gabe. The world doesn’t make sense after that because you’re measuring it against things most people can’t imagine.”
Things the therapists told him. Things he’d come to terms with back when he was in the veterans program on the Black Heart Ranch. Back before they deemed him fit to return to the real world.
“Yeah,” he said just to reassure her he was still there. He tightened his grip on the wheel, then made himself loosen it a fraction. The road cut past fields gone brown. Fences flashed into view and were gone. “And you’re doing everything right. It’s not you, Lu.”
“I know.” A beat of silence. “I also know when you’re halfway to nowhere.”
His mouth tugged. “You’re psychic now?”
“Don’t need to be.” The affection in her voice went straight to the place in his chest that hurt. “You get quiet in a certain way when you’re about to bolt. I felt it when I brought you dinner. You were smiling, but your eyes were somewhere else.”
He hadn’t realized it showed. He hadn’t meant for it to. “I didn’t mean to ruin it.”
“You didn’t.” She let that sit with him. Then in a gentle voice said, “Tell me where you are.”
He glanced at the next mile marker, the one that told him he’d shot past the line where he could return by midnight. He could lie, could name a town and say he was getting gas.
But she’d hear the lie in his voice. She always did.
“On 17. West.”
