“Okay, then,” Peyton said with a shrug.

Rosa settled in and began her interview, asking what he was doing, where he had come from, who he had met along the way, and what he had learned from his journey. He told her about Finn and Aunt Gert, who had been preparing him for this trip all along, though he didn’t know it at the time. He described Will and the races in Daytona and the jail he had slept in. But then his mind drifted back to the hospital in Atlanta and the two hungry children he had fed. He told Rosa about Bonnie—how fearless and smart and selfless she was, and how he hoped she and her little brother were alright. Rosa hung on his every word, her pen flying across her notebook.

At last, she asked him what was becoming a familiar question: “Why are you doing this?”

He became very still and considered his answer. He wanted to be truthful, not just with Rosa but with himself. Finally, he said, “Because I’m hoping I’ll find what my father did when he took this ride—and because it’s the last thing I’ll ever share with him.”

Rosa stopped writing. Mama Eva put down her soup ladle. Gina stopped tearing bread from a loaf. All three women looked at each other and then burst into tears. Next, they were all over Peyton, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek.

“Ladies, ladies!” he cried. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to make you sad.”

The women all sat down at the table, blotting their eyes with dish towels and napkins.

“Peyton, you are going to make a wonderful story,” Rosa said, sniffing as she talked. “And I will tell it right, you just wait and see. I will use my thesaurus and everything. By the way, I need to take your picture tomorrow morning. I am out of flashbulbs for my camera, so I need the daylight.”

The kitchen grew quiet as the women kept dabbing their eyes and shaking their heads.

“Does this mean I don’t get any more stew?” Peyton said with a grin.

Now the women were laughing again. “Bring your bowl to me, sweet Peyton, and I will fill it as many times as you like,” Mama Eva said as she went to the stove. “And before you leave my house, you gonna call you mama and tell her you safe, sí?”

“Sí, Mama Eva.”

twenty-eight

Sunday morning turned Mama Eva’s house into a beehive, everyone gathering first around her breakfast table, then scattering to get dressed for mass before reconvening on the front porch. She insisted that Peyton come to church with her family and spend one more night under her roof before moving on. So he borrowed church clothes from one of Gina’s brothers. Rosa took his picture next to his bike before they all walked together toward the church bells ringing out through the palm trees.

St. Joseph’s was a beautiful old stone church with a bell tower and massive iron-hinged doors made of heart pine. Peyton’s family had been members of Independent Presbyterian in Savannah as long as anybody could remember. He had never been inside a Catholic church.