It’s the fella who’s there, again and again, in the cold, with a wrench, asking nothing, for no reason but that he decided you were worth the showing up for.

I’d spent sixty-two years thinking love was something you felt.

Del taught me it was something you did.

And then he screwed the lesson to the back of a bench where his grandchildren’s grandchildren will sit, and never said another word about it, and we went and got pie.

Chapter 15 — What Carol Would Say

I talk to Carol sometimes, still, out loud, usually in the truck — the ’72 Ford, which Del gave me outright last Christmas, said he’d only ever fixed it to have a reason to keep me coming around, and could I stop pretending I didn’t know that.