“Forty-six years.”
“Forty-six years,” he said, “and you never got yourself a real license.”
That was when he held it up to the sun. That was the library line, and the little laugh through his nose.
Then he asked her if she was on any medication. He asked her if she knew what day it was.
My face went hot. I felt it all the way down my neck. He was talking to my mother like she was a confused old woman who had wandered away from a nursing home.
“It’s Saturday the eighth, Deputy,” she said. “The social starts at two.”
He looked at her a second longer, the way you look at a dog that won’t come when you call it. Then he went back to his truck and sat down again in the cold air.
