"She didn't write this for you," she said.
"No. Ludie told me."
"She wrote it so she wouldn't chicken out." Daria laughed, a short, wrecked sound. "That's my mother. She has holes in her memory you could drive a truck through and she still doesn't trust herself not to be brave enough." She rubbed her face with both hands. "I don't know what she wants with you. Do you understand that? I don't know. Is she going to tell you she forgives you? Is she going to yell at you? Is she going to give you the boxes back? I don't know, and she doesn't know either, half the time. Yesterday she asked me if Sully was going to pick her up from the hospital. My dad. She asked me if my dad was coming."
"I'm sorry," Bonner said. It was a sentence he had said so many times in thirty-three years that it had worn smooth in his mouth like a creek stone, and he hated it, and he said it anyway, because it was true.
"I don't want you up there," she said. "I want to be clear. I think she's not well enough. I think whatever she has to say to you, it's going to cost her something, and she doesn't have a lot left to pay with. And I think you're going to walk out of that room and get on your motorcycle and ride home and feel better, and she's going to lie there and feel worse. That's what I think."
"That's a fair thing to think."
"Stop agreeing with me."
He was quiet. Then he said, "Mrs. Ketterman, Daria, I'll say this one thing and then I'll go. I didn't come here to feel better. If your mother wants to see me, I'll stand wherever she wants me to stand and hear whatever she wants to say, and if she wants me to leave, I'll leave. But if you don't want me in that room, I won't go in it. I won't go around you. You're her daughter. You were his daughter first, before any of this. That's the first claim. I'm not anywhere on the list."
Daria Ketterman stared at him.
"I'm going to go sit at the Chevron across the road," he said. "The one with the little diner in it. I'll be there till they close, which I believe is nine. If you want me, you know where I'll be. If you don't, I'll ride home in the morning and I won't come back. I won't send any more letters if you'd rather I didn't. I'll keep sending the money somewhere. A scholarship, maybe, or the lineman's fund. I'd ask your permission for that. But I won't send anything to your mother's house again if you tell me not to."
He picked up his helmet from the seat. Ludie, behind her mother, made a small sound.
"Ludie," he said. "Thank you for the note. You did a brave thing. It was also a wrong thing, and you should probably take that up with your grandma. But it was brave."
He put the helmet on, and buckled it, and swung his leg over, and started the bike, and rode the two hundred yards across Aultman Street to the Chevron at the slow, careful speed of a man who has been watched by a child.