Patty said Richard stood in that parking lot for a long time afterward, staring down the road toward the highway.
Like some part of him genuinely believed I might turn my car around and drive back to fix everything.
By then, I was already in the air.
Nina was waiting outside the terminal in Denver, leaning against her car with her arms crossed.
She didn’t say anything at first. She just hugged me. Hard. For a long time.
“You did it,” she said.
“I left the cobbler,” I said, and for some reason that was what made me cry.
At her townhouse, she made me tea and put me on the couch under a blanket. After an hour, I finally turned my phone back on.
Ezoic
Ninety-three missed calls.
I scrolled through Richard’s texts. They changed as the hours went by, like a man going through the stages of something.