"Eight to one."
He nodded. He did not say he would come. She did not ask him to. He reached over and turned the key back and the engine knocked twice more and shuddered and stopped, and the car was quiet, ticking, and the medal sat on the dash in the last of the light with his fingerprint on it next to her father's.
He took the key out and held it a moment. Then he got out of the car, the same controlled fall in reverse, and handed it back to her, and he took the hardware-store envelope out of his breast pocket where he had put it and held that out to her too.
"Put this back," he said. "In the glovebox. Where he kept it."
"You don't want it?"
"I want it." His voice did something and he waited until it stopped. "I want it so bad I can't— Not today. It's where it goes. It's been where it goes for thirty-seven years. I don't know what I'd do with it." He shook his head. "My mother screwed it into that car so he'd come home. And he did. Every time. And then your dad— your dad drove it home every time too. Didn't he."
"Every time."
"So leave it in there. I don't know. Maybe I come by Saturday and look at the albums and I take it. Maybe I don't. I don't know yet. I don't know anything right now. I need to—" he looked at his patrol car, at the laptop screen glowing behind its windshield. "I need to go do something first."
Selma took the envelope. She leaned into the car and put it back in the glovebox, under the plastic sleeve, where it had always been, and closed the glovebox with a click.
When she straightened up he was standing a few feet away with his thumb on the radio clipped to his vest. He looked at her. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he tilted his head toward his shoulder and pressed the button.