She Walked Out, and Ten Years Later She Showed Up With Expensive Gifts at a Twelfth Birthday Dinner

“Not today, Daniel,” he said.

He glanced over my shoulder down the empty asphalt street behind my truck.

“Did somebody phone you?” I asked.

“A man called at seven thirty,” Arthur said.

“He said you were taking the day off for a family emergency.”

“Who was it?”

“He didn’t give his name,” Arthur said.

He laid a crisp ten-dollar bill on my truck door, turned, and went back up his front steps without a glance behind him.