“Tonight?Is it something that needs me there in an hour or can I stop by tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow sounds good.Text me when you’re on the way.I’ll see you then.Love you.”She hung up.
The radio belted out: “She’s the kind of woman songs are written about.”
Damn you, Roy Hurd.I smacked the button to turn off the song that reminded me of Erika.
I’d never met anyone as fearless as Erika.In addition to saying whatever crazy thing popped into her head—case in point: diarrhea stains—she was all-in on whatever she committed to doing.Like kissing.She’d never expected me to lead the way.She was motivated from the first second to the last in a way that had challenged me to step up my game many times before we broke up.I often wondered if she’d be the same in bed, not that we’d made it to that level.Heavy petting, sure, but…
Stop it,I thought.She was leaving Vision.And she still hated me.
I pushed the truck to sixty on the highway, which wasn’t an interstate but a divided four lane with a grassy median.As I rounded the big curve a few miles out of town, I slowed down, pulling to the shoulder in front of the sheriff’s Tahoe.The flashing lights lit the side of the road in blue bursts.My sneakers crushed glass as I walked to the back of my truck.I refused to think too hard about the glass’s origin.
With a heavy heart I pulled two wooden crosses out of my truck bed.
“Give me one.”Dante pushed back the brown hat with the star in the center and held out a hand.The golden name tag with “Rivera” on his shirt made me proud.He’d worked hard since we graduated to make the force, although he swore they only let a half-Mexican join because they needed a token Spanish speaker.Total bullshit.
I handed him one of the crosses.“I can’t thank you enough for helping me with this.It’s…”
“I gotcha.Hope was like a second mom to me, just like Roland was a second dad to you.”He put a hand on my shoulder.“Did Knox make these?”
“Barely had to ask and he put them together last night.He dropped them off at work this morning.He might be a lawyer now, but he never lost his touch for woodworking.”
“Did you bring the mallet?That’s not something I have in the work car.”
I pulled it out of the back seat of the truck.In silence we wedged the two crosses into the ground.
“Should we say a few words?”I took off my black cap and stared at the crosses, which were an inadequate reminder of the accident that took Hope and Roland.
Dante removed his hat too.“It’s not what you take with you when you leave this world behind.It’s what you leave behind when you go.”
“Aren’t those the lyrics of a Randy Travis song?”I tried not to smile.
“Maybe.”He shrugged.“Seems appropriate.”
I gave a half-hearted chuckle, but it didn’t supersede my sense of emptiness.“I can’t believe they’re both gone.So stupid for a semi-truck to have merged into them.”I covered my face to covertly wipe my watering eyes.“I keep expecting Roland to walk into the clinic and crack one of his awful dad jokes.”
“He hit me with a gem the other day.Want to hear it?”Dante rubbed his hands together.I knew he’d tell it even if I said no.“I made a pencil with two erasers.It was pointless.”
I groaned.
Dante said, “I guess you’ll have to take up the gauntlet and be the bad jokes doctor.”
“Roland left me with the business in a mess.”I toed dirt off my shoes.“He may have been well liked, but he sucked with finances.He’d never accept my help and was too cheap to hire an accountant.”We stared at the blue lights flashing across the wooden crosses.
“You want her to stay, don’t you?”
“It’ll be tough either way.”
“How did she look?”Dante shot me a side-eye, the kind that saiddon’t lie, I’ll know.
I blew out a breath hard enough that it pooched out my cheeks.
“That good, huh?”Dante chuckled.“Drew said you were a jerk to her on the farm today.”
“It wasn’t intentional.”I swiped the mallet off the ground and headed back to the truck.“Did Drew also tell you he announced he was making a play for her?He wants her to stay.”
Dante threw his arms over the side of my truck bed and leaned in, bowing his head.“He said he hadn’t seen you act that way since she left.You’re usually pretty levelheaded around the ladies.Maybe even bored.They like to throw off their clothes when you so much as look in their direction.”
