"I heard them in the storeroom one night. Counting money. Darrell said a guy in Reno gives them like eight thousand for a good bike, no questions. Curtis said they had to be more careful after the trike. Then I found the pills. In a pill bottle in the storeroom, behind the flour. Somebody else's name on it. An old lady in Ely. I think it's Darrell's grandma." She was twisting her apron in both hands. "I wanted to tell somebody. I wanted to tell the sheriff the day they came about the German guy. But Curtis was standing right there. And then the next time, I thought I'd tell, and I didn't. And then the trike. And I kept thinking, if I tell, he'll know it was me, and if they don't believe me, I'm stuck here with him, and if they do believe me, they'll put me in some home in Carson City and I'll never..." She stopped. Her eyes had filled. "I'm so sorry. I should've told before. That man broke his arm because I didn't tell."
"Hey," Tom said quietly. "Look at me."
She looked up.
"That man broke his arm because two grown men put drugs in his coffee," Tom said. "Not because of you. You're sixteen?"
"Fifteen. Sixteen in November."
"Fifteen," Tom said. He had to wait a moment. "You're fifteen years old, and you're out here in the middle of the desert by yourself with no phone, and you just stood up to them anyway. That's not on you. None of it's on you. You hear me?"
She nodded, but he could see she did not believe him. Not yet.
"Why me?" he asked. "Why today? You didn't say anything about the German guy, or the trike. What made you do it today?"
Wren looked out the window at the Road King, sitting blue and silver in the sun.
"You knew what a wren was," she said. "Nobody ever knows. They always say, like the bird? Like it's weird. You said, little brown thing, sings loud for its size. That's what my mom used to say. Exactly that." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, fast, angry at herself. "It's stupid."
"It's not stupid."
"And you said your wife picked the color for your bike. You said it like..." She shrugged, helplessly. "Like she was still here. I don't know. I just couldn't watch him do it to you."
From the kitchen came the bang of the back door.
Wren was out of the booth and behind the counter before the door had finished swinging, wiping down the coffee station with her back to the room, and Tom was looking at his menu, and when Curtis came in through the kitchen with his phone in his hand, the diner looked exactly as it had before.
Curtis came out with a plate. Chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, a pile of canned green beans, all of it swimming in white gravy. He set it in front of Tom and stood back.