She always wanted me to have friends of my own, used to nag me about it, you can’t just have me, Walt, you need your own people, and I’d wave her off, and she was right, she was right the way she was right about most things, and I wish I could tell her so.

But I think she knows.

I think, wherever the dead go, they get to see the ones they worried about finally land on their feet, and I hope she saw me building that bench, and I hope it made her laugh, the old engineer overbuilding a park bench with his new best friend, both of them too proud to say what they were really making.

Chapter 16 — The Long Way Around

People from my old life, the few who still call, sometimes ask why I stay in Coldwater — this nowhere town, they say, this speck on the map, don’t you get bored, don’t you miss the city.

And I never know how to explain it in a way they’ll understand.