"Are you hurt, baby girl?"
She looked down at the scrape on her forearm. "My arm, my blouse, and my pride. Nothing that won't mend."
"Stay inside," Harvey said. "I'm coming. And Audrey, don't apologize for calling me."
She sat where she could see the lobby wall while the evening light changed outside. The photographs remained where they were, lit by fluorescent tubes, each one containing somebody else's unasked questions. Audrey had arrived on that road intending to carry her mother's last scholarship fund to a deserving student. Before sunset, she was beginning to understand that carrying it home again might require learning how many other families had been made to surrender theirs.
Harvey arrived a little after seven, wearing the brown corduroy jacket Audrey had seen at Sunday dinners for as long as she could remember. He stood still when he saw the torn blouse, the angry marks on her arm, and the empty place beside her left ear. For one terrible instant she saw Willa's death reflected in his expression, as though the sight of Audrey injured had brought the older woman's absence back into the room. Then he took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders without asking permission.
"Come on, baby girl," he said. "Let's get you out of this building."
His green pickup smelled of peppermint, old vinyl, and the coffee he carried everywhere in a steel thermos. He drove slowly until the county station disappeared behind them. Only then did Audrey tell him what had happened, beginning with the alleged traffic violation and continuing all the way to Lyman's laughter at her written title. Harvey did not interrupt, although his hands tightened on the wheel when she described the gold earring.
"They kept all of it, Mr. Harvey. The scholarship. My car. They wouldn't even write down the earring."
"I heard you," he said. "Tell me about the envelope."
"He threw it down the slope like litter. Mama's handwriting, gone into the weeds."
Harvey changed lanes at the next interchange. The pickup began heading south, away from Port Ellis. Audrey saw the highway signs and sat up straighter.
"Mr. Harvey, where are you taking us?"
"Back to mile marker seventy-four."
"It's getting dark. We don't know where the paper landed."
"I drove trucks for forty-one years. I know how wind moves along that stretch of interstate. We'll look before the roadside crews come through."
He spoke without drama, but something in his voice carried an old anger she had never heard directed so clearly at another person. Audrey knew better than to ask a truck driver to turn around once he had decided where the road went. She pulled his jacket closer and leaned her head against the seat, feeling exhaustion reach her bones now that no one was ordering her to stand still.