“It was Roy.”
“Good for him, too.”
“We’re not, ya know, exclusive or anything. It was just, ya know, what it was.”
Tucker knew that Roy had made it home alive. He’d check the obituaries in the weekly paper faithfully. One day in the supermarket, he thought he saw Roy, and though he tried to talk himself out of it, he later called the McKenna house, asked for Roy, and then hung up when someone said, “Just a moment.” Every time a new phonebook arrived, he would look for “Roy McKenna,” figuring he would eventually get his own place. He finally saw it, and dialed.
“Hello?”
Tucker’s breath had caught at the sound of his voice, but once again, he’d hung up. “Richard Burke” never showed up in the local Pine Plains directory.
“We talked about you. I can’t help but wonder what took you so far away mentally, ‘cause the distance isn’t much logistically, that you never picked up the phone in ten years to find out if Roy was alive.”