34.

I was sitting in a stolen car, my third that week, waiting. Several months had passed since I drove away from that little house outside Las Vegas, but it could have been one night. The same night lived over and over again. It wasn’t even really living, just endless running, like a hamster on a locked exercise wheel. Always running and getting nowhere. No sign of Vukasin, but I still had to keep on running—not just to keep him from finding me, because whenever I stopped, I started to remember.

The car was parked in the lot of a mid-sized strip mall, occupied by the same familiar, forgettable franchise businesses you’d find anywhere in the country. There was only one I was interested in. A Mail Boxes Etc. tucked in between a dry cleaners and a Starbucks.

Finally, the UPS truck I’d been waiting for pulled up out front, blocking traffic and cutting off several annoyed midmorning coffee junkies from their fix. The driver was a short black man who made up for his lack of stature with musclebound width. I’d been watching him for a week and recognized him, knew his routine. According to the tag on his brown UPS uniform shirt, his name was André, and he always stopped in the Starbucks for a Skinny Latte after his 10:45 delivery. I wondered if today was the day, if my package was part of the teetering stack that André was dollying into the mailbox place.

I was taking a pretty big risk to get that package. I’d ordered it online, paid for it with a stolen credit card and had it delivered here, to a box rented under a fake name. I’d scouted the place for days before that, making sure it was safe, familiarizing myself with the routines of the people who worked there and the people who came in to get their mail. Nothing remarkable, nothing out of the ordinary, but I kept watching anyway, just to be sure. Even with all my precautions, I was still exposing myself by coming back to the same place every day, and I’d still created a paper trail no matter how convoluted. Stupid, I know. But that’s how bad I wanted what was in that package.

André was taking his time, flirting with the pretty, barely legal Korean girl behind the counter. Eventually, he signed over the stack of packages and headed to the Starbucks. I waited until he had his coffee, got back in his truck and drove away before I went in. I didn’t take off my sunglasses.

I unlocked box number 213. Inside was a small paper slip informing me I had a package. I handed the slip to the pretty girl and she gave me a stiff cardboard envelope with an Arizona return address. I scrawled an unreadable signature on her clipboard and she went back to staring into her iPhone like I’d never existed. I left, silently thanking her for her attention deficit disorder. I never saw her again.

I carried that package around with me for weeks, unopened. I’d take it out of my go-bag every so often, turning it over and over in my hands, but I couldn’t bring myself to break the seal. Not until the tail end of another endless, sleepless night in another forgettable motel.

It was still dark, but not for long. The parking lot outside my single dirty window was full of cars but devoid of activity. The couple in the next room had been engaged in howling, wall-thumping theatrics for hours, but they’d finally fallen silent about twenty minutes earlier. No signs of life anywhere in the complex. I could have been the last living human on Earth.

I took the package out, turned it over and picked at the now peeling label. I was about to put it away again, but I didn’t. I tore it open.

Inside was a signed 8 × 10 print of a cowboy painting titled “After the Fight.” The subject of the painting sat on a crude, splintery bench outside a rough saloon. His hat lay in the dust at his feet and there was blood on his torn shirt. He was looking down at his open hands, his face leaden with remorse and self-loathing. The subject’s hair was long and dark and his clothes were from another era, but I would have recognized that face anywhere. It was Hank.

Regret. Christ, I’d been living with that particular emotion for so long it felt as intimate and familiar as my heartbeat. But was there really any kind of happily ever after that might have been, if only I’d done things differently? Or just a different shade of heartbreak?

I looked at the painting for a few more minutes, a dull ache in the hollow of my chest. When I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, I put it back in the envelope and tucked it into my bag.

I left the motel without checking out. The sun was just coming up as I pulled my latest stolen car into the early rush hour traffic. I didn’t have anywhere to go. I just drove.