Page 135 of What Boys Learn

“Yes.”

“But when we were going out, that made no sense. Once, I dropped by and left a note on your door and you were really happy about it. Another time, I brought you flowers—”

I groaned. “Okay, better example. When you got all up in my face about not deleting my dating apps.”

“Okay. I get that. ‘Put a ring on it,’ right?”

“No, Robert! I never wanted you to propose to me.”

His hands flew off the steering wheel. “Hey! Sorry!” A long line of Harleys continued making their way around us.

“Put your hands back. Okay, the Blue Lives Matter T-shirt you gave Benjamin.”

“That was ajoke.”

“He didn’t think so.”

“Yes, he did! Your son has an ironic sense of humor. And he’s smart, Abby. Sometimes I think you forget that.”

“So you went and bought him an offensive T-shirt.”

“No. I got it from a buddy. I didn’t buy it, and I didn’t want it. We were repainting your old apartment kitchen, remember? And I brought over a bunch of T-shirts we could use for rags and stuff. Benjamin saw the Blue Lives one. He thought it was hilarious. He asked if he could have it. I said, of course! I thought he was using it to protect his clothes from the paint. I never thought he’d wear it to school.”

I took all that in. The Carrie Underwood song on the radio ended. Now there was a guy singing about how beer never broke his heart. “Why didn’t you ever tell me all that?”

“Why didn’t you ask?”

I turned off the radio.

“Robert, I might just be a person who can’t have a longterm relationship with anyone, for a long list of reasons.”

“So, boundaries are one.”

“And worse than crossed boundaries were the excessive gifts.”

“Gifts,bad. Not what my mama taught me, but okay.”

“Too much, too soon. You know?”

I looked over and saw his eyes were red.

“You’re a good man, Robert. Most of the time.”

He forced a laugh. “And you’re a good woman, Abby. Most of the time.”

Exactly. But I still never planned to tell him about the times I hadn’t been.

Then I thought of Benjamin, refusing to tell me about the clonidine pills. Maybe it wasn’t so hard to understand, after all. Maybe other people would call it guilt, but it wasn’t that simple. You didn’t want someone to die, but you weren’t careful, either. You did something wrong, but not as wrong as everyone will think, and you’re used to that, because no one has understood you for as long as you can remember. You did something, but you couldn’t see how it would play out. You want to forget, but you know you won’t.

It’s a scab you’ll keep picking at, forever.

The sign at the bottom of the vast, sloping yard saidSOLD, just as Robert’s cop friend told us it would.

“The grass is recently mowed,” I pointed out, trying to sound hopeful.

We knocked on the front door and peered in the windows. I called the realtor listed on the sign and she tried to interest me in other similar properties for sale, but when I told her I was only trying to reach Curtis Campbell, and I had one phone number for him already but he wasn’t answering, she had nothing to add.

At the last minute, the realtor said, “Is his trailer gone from the driveway? I asked him to move it.”