Heat from Interstate 40 was rising up through the floorboards when I spotted the double stroller parked next to the highway guardrail.

A woman in a faded red sweater was bent over in the gravel ditch, picking up trash.

I flipped on the turn signal and eased forty thousand pounds of high-roof sleeper onto the gravel shoulder.

“Why are we stopping?” Tiffany asked from the passenger seat.

I didn’t answer.

The air brake hissed as the pressure bled off, rattling the cab floor under my boots while I watched the woman in the mirror straighten up.

Her face was much thinner than it had been two years before, the skin stretched tight over her cheekbones.

She turned toward the cab, and her hands were shaking so badly she had to hang on to the stroller handle to stay on her feet.

“Is that Megan?” Tiffany raised a hand to her throat and touched her diamond pendant.

“What in the world is she doing out here?”

In the double stroller were two tiny babies bundled in yellow flannel blankets.

One had on a blue baby cap with a frayed yarn pompom on top.

I unbuckled and cracked open the heavy door, but Tiffany leaned all the way across the leather console before I could climb down.

She lowered her window two inches and stuck her right hand out into the muggy air.

A single bill slid out of her manicured fingers and drifted down to the gravel.

It tumbled through the dry dirt until it came to rest face up by Megan’s worn-out sneakers.

It was a twenty, coated in red highway dust.

Megan didn’t look down at the money.