To Love and to Perish - By Lisa Bork Page 0,1

masculine muscle. He was examining the interior of a 1957 black Corvette with silver coves. “Ray, Danny needs to stay close to us. There are a lot of people here. We don’t want to lose him.”

He straightened and put his arm around me. “What do you think this car would go for?”

“Around sixty thousand.” I tugged on his sleeve. “We need to catch up to Danny.”

With a look of regret, Ray pulled himself away from his dream car. “He’s fine. He’s having a good time. Leave him alone.”

“He is alone, Ray. That’s my point.”

Ray’s arm dropped from my shoulder. “Listen, Jolene, Danny is almost thirteen now. He needs his space. I know the word ‘mother’ is included in smother, but you’ve got to loosen the leash a little. He’s not going to get lost. Let him enjoy himself.”

Ray only called me by my given name when he was irritated—or in the mood, which wasn’t likely at the moment. This wasn’t the first time we hadn’t seen eye to eye on how to care for Danny.

“Okay, if you say so.” I continued down the street, pretending to look at the array of cars, but I didn’t stop moving until I caught sight of Danny out of the corner of my eye. I needed to know he was safe.

A moment later, Ray appeared at Danny’s side, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Danny was only twelve, and although he had many skills and experiences other children his age did not, he still needed to be protected from evil. Unfortunately, evil wasn’t so easy to recognize or anticipate as one might think.

I walked across the street to join them. We continued on, reaching an intersection where the street was painted like a black and white checkerboard pattern. Danny pointed to it with glee. “It’s a race flag.”

“You know what else is cool?” I beckoned for him to follow me over to the sidewalk. “See this stone marker?”

“Yeah.” Danny’s gaze moved over the inscription.

“It’s part of the Drivers Walk of Fame. The markers have the names of the greatest drivers who have competed at the Glen since 1948. They have them all up and down Franklin Street, beginning at the starting line of the original race course and heading north. This year, Paul Newman gets a marker.” Posthumous. To match his stone on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a place Danny had probably never heard of or been.

“The spaghetti sauce guy?”

Ah, the gap between generations. Approaching forty, both Ray and I remembered a slew of celebrities, politicians, and athletes Danny would never see. “He was also a famous actor and race car driver. I saw him win a race driving a Nissan at the Glen in 1985.”

“Cool. Hey, Ray, look at this Mini Cooper. Think you could fit in it?”

I followed my boys as they took in the sights, bemused by the fact that even though I knew way more about cars and the Glen’s history than Ray, Danny seemed more willing to stay by Ray’s side. Of course, it was natural for a boy his age to prefer spending time with men, especially Ray, who had a more exciting career as a county deputy sheriff, an excellent poker face that I referred to as his “good-cop, bad-cop, whatever-you-need-me-to-be-cop face,” and the ability to put a wicked spiral on a football. Even when Danny came to my shop after school, he always wanted to be out in the garage with my mechanic Cory, learning about engines, suspensions, brakes, and all the other technical stuff instead of my “boring” sales and bookkeeping.

Yes, Danny was definitely becoming a little man, as evidenced by his height, now an inch over my own five-foot-four, the smattering of acne on his forehead, and the frequent crack in his voice. He preferred to keep his dark hair long, but neither Ray nor I would allow it so long as to cover his face. I liked to see Danny’s high cheekbones and even the little nick the size of a pinhead on his right cheek just underneath his eye. He never told us where he got that. We weren’t sure we wanted to know. The knowledge might add more gray hair to Ray’s already light temples and a deeper furrow to my brow.

It tickled me that both my boys had beautiful brown eyes and that our whole family had brown hair, Ray and Danny’s both straighter and darker than my bobbed hair. To a stranger, Danny looked like our child,