Page 130 of Cherry Picking

“The hell you did.”

“I did. Palm, section fourteen. Ray was short-handed.”

He looks at me across the center console, his expression shifting through three different versions of surprise before he finally turns back to the windshield. He doesn’t say anything, but I catch the way his mouth hitches at the corner—that slight, stubborn lift of satisfaction.

“Which section?” he asks after we’ve cleared the first mile.

“Fourteen. East side.”

We drive for a while in silence. The truck’s A/C is losing its battle against the June glare, and neither of us mentions the sweat tracking down our temples.

“So it’s finished,” he says finally. “The contract?”

“Signed it on the ninth.”

“And you told Evie first.”

“I did.”

“Hm.” He adjusts the cane against the door. “Twenty-nine years I’ve been your father, Briggs.”

“You mentioned that yesterday.”

“I’m going to keep mentioning it. It’s the only card I’ve got left.” He looks out at the passing palms, his gaze steady. “What’d you get?”

“Four years.”

“I know it’s four years; I saw it on the television. I’m asking what you got.”

“Less than I’d have gotten if I’d hit the market on July first.”

“How much less?”

“Enough that my agent asked me three times if I was certain.”

I brace for the lecture about leaving money on the table, because he’s a man who spent forty years in HVAC and has very strong opinions about the price of a decision. He knows the value of a dollar better than anyone.

“Good,” he says instead.

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you, son.”

Sierra Vista is nearly empty at ten thirty. Anyone with any sense came at seven, and anyone without it is smart enough to stay in the shade. The desert heat is already shimmering off the gravel in heavy waves.

I park on the main path and get the buckets out. My father brushes me off when I move to assist, getting himself out of the truck with a grimace and standing there until he has his balance, his knuckles white on the cane.

Then he starts walking.

He covers the forty yards to my mother’s marker without stopping and without letting me take the flowers. It’s a slow process, but I walk beside him, matching his pace until we reach the granite.

“You want to sit?” I ask.

“Don’t start with the bullshit,” he grumbles.

He gets down on the stone bench beside her headstone. I fill the vase while he starts his thing—a low-volume conversation with a woman who’s been gone for twenty-four years. It’s a dialogue I’ve never been invited into and don’t need to be.

After a few minutes, he waves me away without turning his head.