In March, Yost had written that Rusk had withdrawn his own union grievance over the suspension. Marcus still did not know what he wanted about that.
Last week Leila had texted him a photograph of a receipt from the Sunrise: LARGE COFFEE 1.69, GUM 1.29, CASH. No message. He had looked at it a long time and then written, Thank you. For all of it. She answered: Nursing school starts in August. He wrote: You'll be good at it. You already know how to stand at a door and watch.
Wendell hung up the nozzle, got back behind the wheel, and before starting the engine leaned across his father, opened the glove box, took out the plastic sleeve with the registration and insurance card, looked at both, and put them back.
Marcus watched him do it. He hated it. He wanted to tell him he didn't have to. He wanted to tell him to do it every time for the rest of his life. Both were true, and he could not make them one thing.
"Dad. Did he ever say sorry? The cop?"
Marcus thought of the folded paper in the gray jacket, the pale ordinary eyes.
"He said he was wrong. Those are cousins. They aren't twins."
"Did you forgive him?"
The sky over the lot was doing the thing his mother called showing off—deep blue overhead, orange low in the west behind the strip mall and the water tower, the canopy lights coming on white above the pumps. Marcus pressed a fingertip into the numb place on the back of his hand and felt, from very far off, something like pressure.
"Not yet," he said. "Maybe not ever. I'm still checking."
Wendell nodded, as if that were something he could use.
"You asked me what the point was," Marcus said. "I think I know part of it. You do it right so that when they get it wrong, it's theirs. All of it. None of it is yours. You make them carry it. That's not enough. It was never supposed to have to be enough. But it isn't nothing." He looked out at the lot, the ordinary cars on their ordinary errands. "And then you tell somebody. You put it in writing. You let somebody check."
Wendell was quiet. "That's kind of a lot."
"It's a lot," Marcus said. "Start the car."
His son started the car. He checked both mirrors and then over his shoulder, signaled though no one was behind them, and pulled out toward the road and the orange sky at exactly the speed limit. Marcus sat beside him with his hands in his lap, palms open, and counted—one, two, three, four, five—and let the count run on past five, and did not stop it.