"Her daughter should be. You took her dad. Her mom took her college. That's a lot of taking for one kid." Hector paused. "Doesn't mean she's right that you should leave."
"I told her I'd wait till nine."
"Then wait till nine. Call me after."
He waited. The light went from gold to orange to the deep rose that comes over the Great Basin in the fall, when the dust of the whole summer hangs in the air and catches the sun. Trucks came and went at the pumps. A boy in a Little League uniform bought a blue raspberry slush and dropped it, and the Basque woman came out from behind the counter with a mop and said something to him in a low voice that made him laugh. Bonner ordered the green chili, because it was something to do with his hands, and ate half of it, and it was as good as he had imagined.
At seven-forty, Daria Ketterman came in.
She stood for a moment just inside the doors, under the cold blast of the air curtain, and he saw her see him. She did not come straight over. She went to the coffee station instead, and poured herself a large cup, and stirred three creamers into it with a great deal more care than it required, and then she came and sat down across from him in the booth without asking.
"Ludie's with my neighbor," she said. "She's in trouble. Big trouble. She knows it."
"All right."
"She cried for an hour. Not because she was in trouble. Because she was scared you'd leave." Daria wrapped both hands around the cup. "I told her you said you'd wait. She said, Grownups say that. I said, Not all of them. And then I thought, Well, now you'd better be there, you son of a bitch, because I just told my kid you would be." She laughed again, that same wrecked laugh. "And here you are."
"Here I am."
"Drinking coffee."
"Hector made me."
"Who's Hector?"