"Also," I said. "A second motorist also stopped."
He looked at me. "Yeah." He laughed, a terrible little sound. "Also. And I could have called them. I could have called the station and said, you got it wrong. And then it was on Facebook, and my mom shared it, and my dad —" He stopped. He took his hand away from his face. "My dad called me. I hadn't talked to my dad in four years. He's a retired fire captain, in Mansfield. Thirty-one years on the job. When I was a kid I wanted to be him so bad I used to sleep in his old turnout coat. And I didn't make the cut — I washed out of the academy, I couldn't pass the swim test, I panicked in the pool, if you can believe that. And he never said anything about it, he just — stopped. Looking at me. You know? Like I was a call that didn't pan out." He swallowed. "And he called me, the night that segment ran, and he was crying. My dad. He said, son, I'm so proud of you, I'm so proud of you. He said, you went in the water. Over and over. You went in the water." He looked at the card in his hands. "What was I supposed to say? Actually, Dad, I stood in it up to my ankles. Actually, a lady in a brown coat did it, and I held the coat."
"Beige," I said.
"What?"
"It was beige."
He stared at me. Then something happened in his face that I didn't expect — a kind of crumpling and then a kind of relief, as if I'd hit him and he'd been waiting to be hit for a long time. "Beige," he said. "Right. Sorry."
"And Talia?"