A mile down the road, he stopped at a discount clothing store in a tumbledown strip mall. He bought a pair of jeans and two shirts. He wore them out of the store and threw his old clothes in the trash. At a hardware store he bought a claw hammer. He drove on until he found a secluded turnoff. He took the hammer to the bullet holes in the side of the SUV. It looked a lot worse when he was done, but they didn’t look like bullet holes.

Charlottesville had changed in the ten years he’d been gone, but at the same time it hadn’t changed a bit. Not in ways that mattered. It was still first and foremost a university town. Distinctly southern and proud of its heritage and traditions, it was also young, vibrant, and easygoing—the best of both worlds, in Gibson’s opinion. He drove into town on Route 29, which became Emmet Street once it crossed Route 250. The university rose up to greet him. New buildings dotted the campus, but it was familiar all the same. Part of him wanted to park and take a walk through Grounds, part of him wanted to take a detour to the White Spot for a Gus Burger, and part of him wanted to turn the car around and get out of there. It wasn’t that he had made a conscious decision never to come back, but somehow he’d always found a reason to be elsewhere.

Distracted by memories, he missed his turn on University Avenue. Rather than make a U-turn, he took Jefferson Park Avenue around, picking up West Main on the far side of Grounds. School was out, and, as in the summers of his childhood, Charlottesville was slumbering, worn out by a long school year and trying to catch up on its sleep before twenty thousand students began returning in a few weeks.

The white brick exterior of the Blue Moon Diner came up on his right faster than he remembered. He pulled into the narrow parking lot that ran alongside the building and sat for a minute in the simmering dark.

He had not seen his aunt since the trial. Miranda had taken him in after his father’s death, and it was fair to say he had not been a grateful child. She had been more than understanding of his tempestuous moods and bad behavior in the way that only a mother who had already raised teenage sons could be. He returned her kindness in the form of an FBI raid on her home.

During the trial, contact with his aunt was reserved and frosty. He couldn’t rightly blame her, but, young and angry, he’d resented her for it anyway.