They needed me to come.

And their needing me to come is the only reason, some mornings, that I did.

The route was not my job.

It was my reason.

It was the family Virgil and I never made, spread out over forty-two miles of gravel, and I have loved every difficult one of them, and now the spreadsheet is going to take my family away from me the same spring it takes my husband’s pension and calls it my retirement.

Chapter 5 — The People on the Road