By the first hour, Holder had learned the following things:
Elda had opinions about his speed, his lane discipline, the position of his mirrors, and the fact that he did not signal early enough before changing lanes. She delivered these opinions from the seat directly behind him in the tone of a woman who had raised several difficult children and had patience for exactly none of their nonsense.
Jazzy controlled the radio with the focused authority of a former performer who had spent forty years making sure a room felt right. She landed on a station playing Stevie Wonder, declared it acceptable, and began to sing along at a volume that suggested she was performing for a much larger audience than four.
Jonnis sat in the middle with a quilt across her lap and her eyes closed when she wasn't watching the scenery and the window when she was. She coughed sometimes — a deep, wet sound that she covered with her fist and moved past without comment, the way you move past something that is simply part of the landscape now.
Lillian read her Bible. She had bookmarks in seventeen places. Holder counted them in the rearview mirror when he had nothing else to do, which was never, but he counted them anyway.
Nobody asked Holder anything personal for the first sixty miles, which he appreciated. Then Elda said:
"What did you do?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You came from the judge. You're young. You're too careful about everything. What did you do?"
Jazzy turned down Stevie Wonder. The van got quiet in that particular way it gets quiet when everyone is listening and pretending not to.
"Wrong place, wrong people, wrong time," Holder said.
"That's everybody's story," Elda said. "What's yours?"
He gripped the wheel. He had a version of the story he told people — shorter, cleaner, the one that left out the parts about his mother. He started to tell it.
And then he didn't know why — maybe it was the road, or the quilt on Jonnis's lap, or the fact that Elda was looking at him like she already knew the short version was a lie — but he told a longer one instead.
He talked for twenty minutes. Nobody interrupted. When he was done the road spread out ahead of them in both directions and the sky was doing something complicated with clouds and light, and Elda said:
"Your mama didn't deserve you."
It landed on him like something thrown from a height. He didn't say anything. He couldn't.
"That's not an excuse for what you did," she continued. "But it's the truth. And you needed somebody to say it."
Jazzy turned Stevie Wonder back up.
Jonnis hummed along.
Holder drove. His jaw was tight. Something behind his sternum was making a sound he hadn't heard from himself in a long time, and he was working very hard to keep it from becoming anything recognizable.
He mostly succeeded