(Rebecca's POV)
Eric drives. He doesn't say anything for the first mile. The road narrows from gravel to two-lane, orchards giving way to pasture, fence posts ticking past the window like a slow clock. The silence is the kind we've learned — not empty, not heavy. Present. The hum of the tires. The faint rattle of the cooler. His index finger tapping the wheel on a beat only he can hear.
Then he glances over.
"Well?" The corner of his mouth. "Findings?"
I look down at the tin robot in my lap. The one Mr. King built. The one Eric played with as a child. The one that sat on a shelf for twenty years because a father knew his son's drawings had become letters. I turn it over in my hands. The legs are wrong — the joints don't articulate evenly. It walks in circles. Mr. King said a boy Jack's
