I thanked Herb for the use of the plane and told him I’d probably see him again soon.
I drove us back to town.
“You still going to Washington?” Jane said after we’d been driving a few minutes.
“Next Tuesday.”
“For three weeks?”
I watched her a long moment. “That’s not a real long time. Not if people talk on the phone every night or so, anyway.”
She laughed. “I guess that’s right.” Then she shook her head and frowned. “See, this is why I’m so rotten about liking somebody.”
“You’re not rotten.”
“Sure I am. I mean, we don’t have anything official between us at all, and already I’m complaining about you going on a trip. I’m just too dependent on people. I drove my husband nuts. The poor guy.”
“Well, I sort of drove my wife nuts, too.”
“You did?”
I nodded. “I’m the same way. Too dependent. She’d go over to Iowa City to take a class, and I’d get all bent out of shape. Feel like I was deserted.”
“Hey, you really are dependent. That’s just the kind of thing I’d do.”
I laughed. “Hey, let’s go out tonight and celebrate being dependent.”
“You’re on.”
We had reached the city limits now, the tidy little Iowa town in the early July sunlight, everything clean and purposeful and timeless against the rolling green countryside. Home.
We were silent for a while, listening to a little rock and roll on the radio, and then she said, “Robert?”
“Yeah?”
“You think about him much?”
“About Tolliver?” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah. I do. Quite a lot, in fact.”
“I wish he wouldn’t have killed himself. But I guess for him it really was about honor, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said, “honor or something very much like it.”
We found a Dairy Queen and pigged out.