He was right. That’s exactly what I was. I called him and Tucker and Celia and McCoy crazy when it was just me who was crazy, I was the crazy one, I was always the only crazy one.
I followed the red taillights. I didn’t know where I was going, or what direction I was going in, or even where, exactly, I was right now. I was, as he’d so rightly pointed out, in a Wendy’s parking lot in the middle of nowhere, and I was going there—nowhere.
I could feel him watching me as I walked away. Maybe a few words passed between him and the old man. I plopped down in the snow at the edge of the parking lot, about fifty feet away from the truck, pulled my knees up to my chest, and stared out over the highway. How many times had I tried walking away from Miles? Once at the bonfire—he’d stopped me—again when Erwin had died—and he’d stopped me again. This time he knew I had nowhere to go.
Shoes crunched a path behind me, and the sleeve of Miles’s jacket tapped me on the shoulder.
“Here,” he said.
I pushed the jacket away. “Don’t want it.” I wiped my eyes again, tried to stop my shivers. All those layers of sheepskin, it was probably like a toaster oven inside.
“I’m sorry I called you crazy.”
“Why? It’s true.” I pulled my knees tighter. “I’m probably going to end up inside the hospital with your mom.”
“No you’re not.” He sounded exasperated. “Your parents—”
“Have already considered it.”
That stopped him.
“So you can take your stupid jacket ’cause you’ll probably freeze without it. What’s your body fat percentage? Negative point-zero-zero—oomph.”
He’d knelt down and flung the coat over my shoulders. Not looking at me, he pulled the coat tighter and said, “You’re so damn stubborn.” Though he tried to hide it, he shivered. “Come on, let’s go.” He offered a hand and I took it, using the other to keep the jacket on.
Strangely, he didn’t let go of my hand when we got back to the truck. As an experiment, I squeezed a little. He squeezed back.
The old man peeked around the hood and smiled when he saw me wearing Miles’s jacket.
“Well, it looks like your battery might need a little juice,” said the man. “I’ve got jumper cables, should only take a second.”
He popped the hood of his car and pulled a pair of jumper cables out of his trunk, and after a bit of instruction on his part, he and Miles set to work. I almost fell asleep standing up, and Miles had to prod me out of my stupor when it was time to go.
“Thanks again,” he said to the old man. Miles’s voice was weak, brittle.
“Really, it was no trouble.” The man smiled and waved, stowing his jumper cables again. “You kids enjoy the rest of your night!” He got into his car and drove away.
Miles stared after him, a small crease between his eyebrows.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, one hand on the passenger side door handle. Miles shook his head.
“It’s nothing, I just . . .” He made an exasperated noise, his shoulders drooping a little. “He made me think of Opa.” He walked around to the driver’s side and got in.
“Oh, wait.” I shrugged the jacket off, climbed into the truck, and handed it across the seat to him. “Seriously, your lips are turning blue. I’ll be fine, really,” I added when he started to protest. He feigned reluctance well as he slipped the jacket back on.
“He told me to give it to you,” Miles said after a solid minute of staring out the windshield.
I was about to make a joke about how good that was, because someone needed to teach him some manners, but then I saw the look on his face.
“Let’s go,” I said softly. “We shouldn’t be too far from home, right?” Miles nodded and threw the truck in drive.
Chapter Thirty-three
Twenty minutes later I had to start talking to keep Miles awake. My lengthy lecture on the Napoleonic Wars (one of Charlie’s favorite subjects) was cut short by the familiar streets of town and what I could only describe as a message from God.
The Meijer sign.
“Stop for a minute,” I said, turning around to look at the store.
“What?”
“We need to go to Meijer.”
“Why?”
“Trust me, we need to go to Meijer. Pull in and park.”
He swung into the parking lot and drove as close as he could get to the doors. I almost had to drag him out of the cab and into the store.
“I work here all the time,” he whined, yawning. “Why did we have to stop?”
“You’re a baby when you’re tired, you know that?”
I pulled him toward the deli counter. His coworkers gave us odd looks as we passed by. Miles waved them off. The main aisle was empty.
Miles nearly crashed into the lobster tank when I stopped in front of it. He blinked once, stared down at it, then looked at me.
“It’s a lobster tank,” he said.
I took a deep breath. Now or never.
“It’s the lobster tank,” I said. “Your mom told me you remembered.”
Miles looked back at the tank, the water reflected in his glasses. At first I thought I’d been wrong, that the odds had been too high, that maybe my mother had been right this whole time and I had made the whole thing up. But then he said, “Do you do this all the time?”