8 weeks in the current budget. I'll show you the spreadsheet. Bear made that too. Unfortunately, down the hall, Bear said something that might have been a protest or might have been an agreement. The acoustic quality made it hard to tell.
"Show me the spreadsheet," Evelyn said. Cole was already moving toward the table. And for the next two hours in that back room with the maps and the photographs and the handwriting, she was already beginning to decipher. Evelyn Harper stopped being the woman who had been abandoned at a diner and started being someone else entirely. Then she asked pointed questions.
She made three phone calls to an old contact at a wholesale grocery distributor she had worked with for a decade to a woman from her church who ran a community hall and owed Evelyn a favor going back to 2019. And to Ruth who answered before the first ring completed. Are you okay? Ruth said. Write this down.
Evelyn said, I need you to go to my house. The blue binder in the second kitchen drawer. The one with the recipe cards and the event planning notes from the church fundraiser. Bring it here. Bring all of it.
A pause. You're organizing something. I'm organizing something. Another pause. Then with a warmth that nearly came through the phone, I'll be there in 40 minutes.
Hung up and looked at Cole. He was leaning against the table with his arms crossed in the expression of a man watching something he'd hoped for but genuinely hadn't predicted. You're doing that thing, she said. What thing? That thing where you look like you're trying not to smile.
I'm not sure what you mean, he said, which was almost certainly a lie. 8 weeks is enough time, Evelyn said firmly. But I need a proper list of everything you have and everything you need, and I need honest numbers, not optimistic ones. Can you do that? Yes.
And I need people who will actually do what I tell them when I tell them. Diane will. Priya will. Dutch will if Diane tells him to. Bear will resist initially and then do it usually correctly.
And you? Cole unfolded his arms and looked at her with those settled direct eyes. I'll do whatever you need, Evelyn, he said. That's why I sat down at your table. She held his gaze.
She was thinking about Michael. She couldn't help it. He was still in there somewhere. The fact of him the morning of him, the six weeks of silence before this morning, and the silence from across the diner booth, and the silence when she stood up and he didn't follow. She thought about him and she thought about the phone call she hadn't answered.
And she thought about Ruth driving over with a blue binder and she thought about the photograph of Gus Martino with his arms in the air. Then she picked up a pencil from the table and turned to a blank page on the legal pad in front of her. Let's start with the budget," she said, and she started writing. Ruth arrived 43 minutes after the phone call, which was 3 minutes longer than she'd promised in something she immediately apologized for. The moment she walked through the door of the clubhouse blue binder, pressed against her chest like a shield.
"Construction on Route 9," she said slightly, breathless. I nearly turned around twice. Then she stopped walking and looked at the room at the long tables, the photographs on the walls, the 11 bikers in various states of coffee consumption, and Evelyn sitting at the center of it all with a legal pad covered in her own handwriting and a pencil tucked behind her ear. Ruth stood very still for approximately 4 seconds. Then she said, "Well, okay, then."
Evelyn looked up. "You brought the binder." I brought the binder, the accordion folder from the shelf above it, and the contacts notebook from your junk drawer because I know for a fact that's where you keep the numbers that actually matter. Ruth set everything on the table with a decisive thud of a woman who has arrived to assist and intends to be taken seriously. She looked across the table at Cole.
You're the biker Cole Rider, he said and extended his hand. Ruth shook it and measured him in about 3 seconds flat. You took care of her today. She took care of herself. Cole said, "I just offered a different direction."
Ruth looked at Evelyn. Evelyn was already opening the accordion folder. Ruth sat down. All right. Ruth said, "What are we building?"
That was the thing about Ruth that Evelyn had loved for 32 years of friendship. She didn't need the whole story before she decided to help. She just needed to know someone she trusted was in the middle of something. And then she showed up with every relevant document she could carry. Over the next hour, the backroom became something close to a command center.
Ruth spread the contacts notebook open and cross referenced names with Evelyn's legal pad. Cole pulled out his laptop and opened the spreadsheet, which was as advertised a document that looked like Bear had built it during a mild crisis with color coding that followed no discernable logic in three different columns all labeled total. Evelyn looked at it for 30 seconds. Exhaled through her nose and said, "Give me the password and go get more coffee." Cole gave her the password and went to get more coffee.
She rebuilt the spreadsheet from scratch in 40 minutes. Priya, who had drifted into the doorway to watch, made a small sound of appreciation when she saw the revised version. That is genuinely beautiful, she said. It's a budget, Evelyn said. It's a beautiful budget.
Bear appeared behind Priya, looked at the screen, and said, "My version wasn't that bad. Your version had a column called MISC. Stuff, Evelyn said without looking up. Misc. Stuff is a legitimate category.
Not when it accounts for 30% of your projected expenditure. It isn't. Bear opened his mouth, closed it, and retreated. Cole returning with two mugs caught the tail end of this exchange and said nothing, but the corner of his mouth moved in a way that Evelyn was beginning to recognize as his version of a broad grin. Blond, the numbers were not good.