The Chair at Signing Day

The truck in the parking lot

The library at our school has a long window that looks out on the side parking lot. About twenty minutes into the cake, I glanced out it and saw a white Ford pickup that I did not recognize, parked at the far end by the bus barn.

Rick was standing beside it. He was not getting in. He was just standing there in that new jacket with his hands in his pockets and the wind pulling at his hair, looking at the building.

My first feeling was not a good one. It was the old feeling, the one that says lock the doors.

Then I saw Caleb see him.

He was by the window with a paper plate, and he went still. He set the plate down on the sill.

“Caleb,” I said.

“I’m just going to go talk to him, Mom.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I know I don’t.” He looked at me. He was eighteen years old and he had his grandfather’s eyes and, God help me, a little of his father’s jaw. “I want to.”

I have thought a lot about what a mother is supposed to do when her grown son walks out into the cold toward the man who left him. I don’t think there’s a right answer. I know what I did.

I let him go. And I stood at that window and did not take my eyes off that parking lot for one second.

Daddy came and stood beside me. He did not say anything. He just stood there with his cap back on, and his hand rested on the windowsill next to mine.

They talked for twenty-two minutes. I know because I watched the clock over the circulation desk.

I could not hear any of it. I could see Rick do most of the talking at first, looking at the ground. I saw him take something out of his jacket pocket and hold it out on his flat palm. I saw Caleb look at it a long time without touching it.

Then Caleb talked. Not long. He pointed once, back toward the building, toward the window. Toward me.

Rick nodded. He nodded a few times. Then he did something I had never in my life seen him do. He put his hand over his eyes and stood there.

Caleb stayed with him until he was done. Then he came back inside, and the white truck pulled out a few minutes after.