Anne snorted. “How would you know?”
“She told me.”
“She never said anything to me.”
He heard the hurt. He just didn’t know what to do about it. “Not everybody can talk about…you know.”
“Their feelings?”
“Yeah. Give her time.”
Her fingers returned to the fray in her jeans. Joe was congratulating himself on getting through this conversation when she asked, “Whendid she tell you?”
“I don’t know. I guess when I was at the house.”
Anne twisted in her seat. “It was you.”
“What?”
“The repairs. You fixed the gutters. You’ve been fixing everything.”
“Not everything.”
“The porch step?”
“It was dangerous.”
“The front door?”
“I adjusted the hinges. No big deal.”
“No wonder Mom thinks you’re wonderful.” She met his gaze again, her eyes shining.
He felt a warning prickle on the back of his neck. She couldn’t go looking at him like that, like he was something special. He shouldn’t be looking at her at all. “How about some music?”
She blinked those eyes at him. “I could put on a playlist.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
She leaned over in her seat to dig in her bag. Her shirt rode up, exposing the bumps of her spine. He focused on the road ahead as she connected the aux cable and scrolled on her phone.
“No Billie Eilish,” he warned.
She shot him a glinting look. “How do you feel about Taylor Swift?”
He had a teenage sister. “I think she’s a powerful, talented woman,” he said promptly.
“Wise answer.”
“With great legs.”
“Ha.” She tapped her phone.
But the music crashing out of the speakers wasn’t anything his sister listened to. It was Rob’s music, eighties’ rock, Journey and Bon Jovi, songs about fast cars and leaving town and cruising down the highway. Anne danced beside him to “Summer of ’69” as the farms and fields rolled by. High in the blue, jet contrails streaked the postcard sky. The wind rushed through the windows as Bruce Springsteen sang Rob’s songs, and for a while, Joe was nineteen again, with the sun on his shoulders and money in his pocket, listening to his friend belt along with the Boss under an open sky.
“I’m hungry,” Anne announced somewhere down the road.
“Eat a muffin.”
