I left the study with the taste of the message in my mouth. I left because I needed air and because I wanted to feel something that wasn’t the heavy hand of paternal calculus. I thought maybe the street would teach me something the house couldn’t.
Outside, the town was doing its best to look normal. Reporters orbited like moths; neighbors pretended to water roses. I walked until I found the end of a sidestreet where Dominic used to have a place to fix motorcycles, the old lot where grease and music had once been the music of our small town. The lot was empty now, and for a second it felt as if the mirror of our lives had been wiped clean.
He was there, sitting on the back of a truck he’d borrowed from someone with a soft heart. He looked smaller than I remembered, his beard shorter, his
