"Dad?"
"Morning."
"What are you doing out here?"
"Nothing," I said. "Standing here."
He looked at me in the dark. I couldn't see his face behind the light. I could see the breath coming out of him in a cloud.
"It's a recovery day," he said. "Six miles. Easy. There's nothing to — it's just easy. You don't time easy days."
"I'm not timing anything."
"Okay." He bounced on his toes a little. "You don't have to stand out here, Dad."
"I know I don't," I said.
He stood there a second longer. Then he turned and started up Wilkie Bridge Road, toward the ridge, at a pace that looked to me like no pace at all, like a boy out for a stroll, and I watched the headlamp go along the shoulder past the first poultry house, and the second, small and white and steady, the beam pointed at the road about ten feet in front of his shoes. He didn't look back. I didn't expect him to.
I don't know how long six easy miles takes a boy like that. Forty-five minutes. An hour. I didn't know. I didn't have a watch on. I'd never replaced the Casio when the band broke last winter, and the other one was on his wrist under a red sweatband, with a dead battery, keeping no time at all.
I put my hands in my pockets and stood by the mailbox in the cold. I figured I'd find out.