Chapter 63

During other visits with Dougie, I bent his angelic ear about other moments spent with Archie.

“His passion for literature has even rubbed off on me. Okay, passion might be a slight exaggeration. You know me, dude.” I leaned in to poke the granite with my elbow. “If a book didn’t have pictures, dialogue bubbles, and a Marvel superhero on the cover, I wasn’t interested. He loves to read, though, like you, anything and everything. And I tell you, snuggled up on that stupid bench in all kinds of weather, as darkness settles in during winter or even evening heat in July, listening to his voice speak the words by Tolstoy, or Browning’s poetry, or even A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh…I don’t even know how to describe how it feels. I was grouchy about it, at first. ‘It’s too cold,’ I’d complained one day finding him there.

“‘We seem to be together a lot at sunset,’ Archie had said, ignoring me.