“Why would I ask him something like that?”

But he had already turned to page forty of his Western and wasn’t going to say another word.

He read a line out loud about a sheriff and a dry creek and chuckled at his own book.

I laughed too, because he wanted me to, and because for one minute the table felt the way it always had.

The freight elevator went down more slowly than I could have walked.

Derek talked the entire way.