He was about Eric's age, a little shorter, a little thinner, with close-cropped black hair going gray at the temples and wire-rimmed glasses. He wore jeans and a faded green T-shirt from some science conference. He did not wave. He just stood there, looking at the car, with his hands at his sides, and even from across the street Eric could see that he was afraid.
Eric looked at the man and then at his son, and he saw it. He could not stop himself from seeing it. The shape of the jaw. The line of the eyebrows. The dark eyes. Something about the way Daniel Reyes stood, slightly round-shouldered, hands loose, was the way Tyler stood at the free-throw line. It hit Eric somewhere under the ribs, a physical blow, and he gripped the steering wheel and let it pass through him.
"Go on," he said. "He's waiting."
Tyler opened the door and got out. He walked across the street slowly. Eric watched him go: his son, in his gray hoodie, six feet tall and sixteen years old, walking up the gravel path toward a stranger who had his face. Halfway up the path, a girl burst out of the house past Daniel, all dark ponytail and knees, and stopped short at the bottom of the steps, and Eric knew it was Sofia, and she said something and Tyler said something back, and then the girl laughed and Tyler laughed, a startled, helpless laugh, and then Daniel came down off the step and stopped in front of Tyler, and the two of them looked at each other. Daniel put out his hand. Tyler looked at it. Then he shook it. Then the three of them went inside, and the door closed, and Eric was alone.
He sat in the car for two hours and forty minutes.
He did not turn on the radio. He watched the shadow of the mesquite tree move across the gravel. A woman in scrubs, who he guessed was Ana, came home and went into the house and, a few minutes later, came out again carrying a tall glass of iced tea and crossed the street and knocked on his window. He rolled it down. She handed him the glass.
"It's a hundred degrees," she said. "You're going to cook in there."