Boyd turned down the main street and pulled the truck into a parking space in front of the Ford dealership. He killed the engine, then turned in the seat to look at me. For the first time, I noticed a brown spot on the iris of his right eye. It was a little dab of brown, right atop the pupil of his green eye. It gave him a curious look, it was a focal point, a very individual characteristic. I wanted to sit and look at it forever, look deeply into his eyes and learn more about Dan’s death and its repercussions in the com­munity, learn more about Boyd and his gentleness, but he lifted his hand toward my face, which alarmed me in my suddenly paranoid state, and I jumped back.

“Hey,” he smiled. “Relax.” Then a gentle forefin­ger stroked my cheek and my chin. His voice was soft and mesmerizing. “C’mon. Let’s go see a movie. I need a laugh.” He came closer. The rim of his hat caught the light from the string of bulbs over the used-­car lot and cast a deepening shadow over his eyes. “Come laugh with me,” he said as he turned his head, and very gently, his lips brushed my cheek. His cologne was strong and deep—a very basic scent, quite opposite the light, almost feminine stuff Lewis used.

He backed away and the shadow receded and I saw the pain in his eyes, and the question just fell from my lips, “Why do you hurt so?”

“Because he was so young,” Boyd said, almost whispering, his hurting eyes looking directly into my own. “Because he had so much to look forward to in life. Because he was robbed of all of the pleasures of growing up and getting married and having kids and a career. And because we’ve all been robbed of having him and his kids around. Danny was a good guy. He would have been a good man, a good citizen, an asset. And now some senseless thing has . . .” He turned away from me and gripped the steering wheel. “Do you want to go to the movies or not?”

I could see that I had upset him, I could hear it in his voice, feel it in the air, but I could not stop myself now. This was too intriguing.

“Maybe it was right for him to die.”

Boyd’s eyes blazed at me. “That’s a lot of funda­mentalist crap. People have been saying that to me, you know. ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ and ‘Somehow it’s all for the best.’ That’s all a bunch of crap. The God I know doesn’t go around ripping the throats out of kids.”

I laid a hand on his jacketed shoulder. The cold was beginning to penetrate the cab. “Don’t you think that sometimes people bring things on themselves?”