In the kitchen, Nell Price turned off the stove and looked over the rim of her glasses. She was sixty-four, with silver hair always escaping its clip and a habit of noticing problems before they became emergencies. She had worked for Evelyn, and now she worked for Mara, although neither woman thought of it quite that way.
"You fed the fellow outside?" Nell asked.
"He was freezing."
"I saw. You did right." Nell glanced at the envelope by the register through the serving hatch. "You still have to call that roofing man tomorrow. Doing right doesn't make the bill disappear."
"I know."
"Then know this too. Your grandmother never fed people because she thought the world would pay her back. She fed them because she could see they were hungry. Those are different things."
Mara carried the dirty coffee pot back to the counter and found the biker studying a framed photograph hanging above the register. It showed Evelyn in her younger days, wearing a yellow raincoat and standing beside a battered red pickup. Her hair was tied back, her smile lopsided, and one arm rested protectively around a skinny teenage boy whose face was partly obscured by the glare on the glass.
The stranger had stopped eating. His mouth was slightly open, and the color had drained from his face. He rose from the stool and walked toward the picture with the unsteady concentration of someone approaching a grave.
"Where did you get that?" he whispered.
"It belonged to my grandmother. She hung it up years ago."
He swallowed. "Evelyn Bell?"
Mara nodded, suddenly cautious. "You knew her?"
The biker placed a hand against the wall beneath the frame, careful not to touch the photograph. For several seconds he said nothing. Then he asked, "Do you have a pencil?"
She brought him one from the register. He took a paper napkin and wrote his name in large, careful letters: GIDEON SHAW. Underneath, he added a date: NOVEMBER 18, 1987.
"If your grandmother kept her notebooks," he said, "there might be a page with that date. I've spent almost forty years wondering whether she remembered me."
Mara stared at the name. Gideon Shaw meant nothing to her, and the date was older than she was. Yet the man's voice had changed in a way that made her reluctant to ask another question. She unlocked the wooden drawer beneath the counter, where a stack of Evelyn's old notebooks sat wrapped in a dish towel.
She found the year 1987 in a blue book swollen by age. November's pages smelled of flour, dust, and the faint dampness of the old building. Beside the eighteenth, in Evelyn's unmistakable slanted handwriting, was a lantern with a small star above it. The entry read: One bowl chicken and dumplings. One bus ticket. Gideon, sixteen. No charge. Come back safe.
Mara read the words twice. Across the counter, the large man covered his eyes with one rough hand. The silence between them was broken only by the refrigerator motor and the rain ticking against the glass.
"That's me," he said. "I was that boy."