CHAPTER 15: Where the Road Ends in Light

By midnight, Mercer Freight’s old terminal was awake.
Drivers stood under sodium lights. Mechanics wiped their hands on shop towels. Dispatchers looked up from glowing screens as Caleb helped Elias down from the truck.
No one clapped. Elias was grateful. Applause would have made the moment too small.
An old driver named Boone stepped forward and handed him a paper cup of coffee, black, no sugar, exactly as Elias had taken it for fifty years.
Elias wrapped both hands around the cup and looked at his son, the trucks, the people who had come when family tried to leave him behind.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we let the lawyers do their work.”
Caleb nodded. “And tonight?”
Elias looked toward the open bay doors, where headlights kept rolling in from the highway.
“Tonight,” he said, “I go home through the front gate.”