He drove through the dark for the first hour without the radio.
This was not unusual. He drove without the radio most of the time, had done since he was sixteen and had learned that the specific quality of road-silence at early hours was one of the few contexts in which his mind could run its full register without the social management that the presence of other people required. Not that he minded other people. Theo was in the passenger seat and had been asleep since the first twenty minutes, which was a skill Theo had developed over eleven years of travel with a man who kept early hours and did not always feel the need to fill them with conversation.
Damon did not feel the need to fill this one.
He drove.
The eastern Washington mountains at four in the morning in late October had the
