We stopped at a trailer park on the edge of town. A young woman named Dee with three kids and a husband in the hospital. We stopped at an apartment building where four different elderly people lived on the same floor, and Dad carried a box up three flights of stairs, wheezing, and I made him let me carry the next one.
We stopped at a little house with a ramp out front, where a man named Curtis lived. He’d lost both his legs in Afghanistan. He was waiting on the porch in his wheelchair at four-thirty in the morning with a thermos of coffee.
“Arne,” he said. “Who’s this?”
“My daughter. Kristin.”
Curtis looked at me for a long moment.
“Your mother,” he said, “used to bring me peach pie. Every August. When the peaches were good.” He took the box from Dad and set it in his lap. “I miss her.”
