He drove back to the gas station in daylight and stood by the pump where he’d been cruel and called it clever. He apologized out loud with no audience and no expectation.
The clerk remembered him. “Find her?” “Not yet,” he said. “But I found the beginning of the part where I stop being the problem.” The clerk nodded like that counts for something, which it does.
He bought water and left it on the side lot curb like an offering to the god of second chances, who is stingy but not absent.
