Around noon the front curtain moved. Barely, a gap of an inch, someone looking out at my car across the street. It closed again.
The afternoon dragged. The rain stopped around two, clouds thinning, weak sunlight breaking through. I got out once to walk up and down the block because my legs were cramping, thencame back. My phone lit up again, a voicemail notification from Lorraine. I could see the preview of her latest text underneath it:you can’t do this to me Finneas I swear to god if you think you can just...
I deleted everything without reading the rest.
Around five the front door opened. The grandmother came out onto the porch with a mug in her hand. She walked to the edge of the steps and looked at my car.
“Are you still here?” she called across the street.
I rolled down the window. “Yes ma’am.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
She looked at me. I couldn’t read her expression from this distance but she stood there, studying the car, before she went back inside. Five minutes later she came out again, crossed the street, and set a sandwich and a glass of water on the roof of my car without a word. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread, cut diagonal. Then she walked back to the house and closed the door.
I ate the sandwich slowly, drank the water, put my hands back on the steering wheel. Peanut butter and jelly from a woman who told me to get off her porch twelve hours ago. I didn’t know what to make of that.
The sun set behind the clouds. The street lights came on. The porch light turned on too, warm yellow against the darkeningsky, and I watched it burn and thought about all the nights I’d sat outside Andrea’s Atlanta house watching a different porch light.
The curtain twitched again around nine. That same inch of warm light through the gap. I watched it and waited.
I wasn’t leaving. If that meant sleeping in this car in front of her grandmother’s house in a town I’d never been to, that’s what I’d do. I’d sit here every day until she talked to me. If she never talked to me I’d sit here anyway, because the old Finneas would have left, would have told himself he’d tried, would have driven back to Atlanta and buried himself in work. I was done being that man. That man lost her. This one was going to fight.
31
— • —
Andrea
I spent the entire day not looking out the window.
I didn’t look once, except for the times I looked, which I wasn’t counting because they didn’t count if I didn’t mean to. Grandma had been giving updates whether I wanted them or not.
“Still there.”
“Still raining.”
“He moved his car to the other side of the street. I think his legs were cramping.”
“I don’t care.”
“I didn’t say you did. I’m just keeping you informed.”
At dinner I burned the rice because I was distracted by the fact that I was absolutely, definitely not thinking about the man sitting in a car across the street. Grandma ate the burned rice without comment, which was how I knew she felt sorry for me, because under normal circumstances she would have made me start over. Then she made a sandwich, put it on a plate, and headed for the front door.
“What are you doing?”
“Bringing him a sandwich.”
“Grandma, no.”
“Starving a person isn’t a punishment, Andy. It’s just mean.”
“He can feed himself.”
“He’s been in that car for ten hours in the rain. I’m bringing him a sandwich. You can hate him on a full stomach.” She was already out the door. I watched through the gap in the curtain I was not looking through as she crossed the street, set the plate on the roof of his car, said something I couldn’t hear, and walked back. She didn’t look at me when she came inside. She didn’t need to.
