“He used to work with Roy on maintenance crews,” she said. “I showed him the photo yesterday because I thought he might recognize something, and he recognized you from the old posters right away.”
“He was waiting for me?”
“Not exactly,” Kate said. “He spends time out there helping stranded drivers for cash, but this morning he called me and said, ‘Kate, she’s here. Her tire blew, and she’s here.’”
The thought of that old man seeing me on the side of Route 9, knowing who I was, knowing what he carried, made my chest ache in a way I did not know how to name. He had not given me comfort, but he had given me the one thing no official ever had.
A door.
Kate grabbed her keys from the counter. “I’m coming with you.”
“No,” I said.
She froze.
“I need to see him first,” I told her, though my voice was shaking so badly that it barely sounded firm. “For one minute, I need to be his mother before everyone else tells him what this means.”
Kate looked as if she wanted to argue, but then Mason appeared in the doorway with his dinosaur pressed against his chest. Her face crumpled at the sight of him, and maybe that was when she understood that I had already lost more minutes than any mother should be asked to surrender.
