Carter waited. The truck ticked as it cooled. A lizard ran up the trunk of a palm tree and stopped halfway, doing push-ups. His father had both hands on the wheel at ten and two like he was still driving.
"Dad."
"I know."
"She's in fourteen. Upstairs. At the end."
"I know."
Five minutes. Ten. The first thunder came, far off, a sound like furniture being moved in another house. His father's knuckles were white on the wheel. Carter thought about a green Ford parked across from a studio in Bisbee for an hour in 1979. He thought about a man in the window with his glasses down his nose, reading.
"Dad," he said. "You're doing it again."
His father turned and looked at him.
"Mom told me," Carter said. "About the truck. In '79. You sat outside for an hour. And then you went home." He swallowed. "You're doing it again."
Something happened to his father's face. It wasn't a smile. It was the thing that comes before one, a long way before, like the first gray at the edge of the window at five in the morning.
"When did you get so smart," his father said.
"I'm eleven."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
He opened the door.
* * *