"Eat while it's hot," said Ellen, softly.
"The world will wait," said Walt.
And it did.
* * *
On Monday morning Hector called the diner at nine to say the pump had come in on the early truck from North Platte. By noon the Ford was sitting in the Prairie Rose lot again, washed, for some reason, its wood paneling gleaming, with a new pump and a new radiator hose and a bill under the windshield wiper for seventy-eight dollars and forty cents.
Walt stood looking at the bill. He had sixteen dollars.
Ellen came out of the diner in her pink uniform with her cardigan over it. She looked at the bill over his shoulder.
"I'll cover it," she said. "And before you say anything —"
"Thank you," said Walt.
She stopped.
"Thank you," he said again. "I'll pay you back when Jimmy gets me on at the company. But thank you. Yes."
Ellen looked at him a long moment, and then she laughed, a real laugh, Marian's laugh, the one that went up at the end like a question, and put her arm through his.
They stood together in the cold sun in the gravel lot under the grain elevator. Inside, Josie was sitting at the counter on a red stool with silver tape, having a final cup of chocolate milk, telling Earl about the Sesame Street tape and the number seven.
"There's something else," Ellen said. "I wasn't going to tell you yet. But I've waited eighteen years to tell you things, and I'm done with it."
"Tell me."