And Decker's done with whichever it is." He turned from the clock. "You did well in there." "I've had this conversation before," Will said. "Different names, different town, same conversation."
"Yes," Marcus said. "You always did." They stood there a moment and then Will put his hands in his pockets and looked at the Norton and thought about what it needed. The methodical comfort of the thought, the clean problem with the findable solution. "You should eat something," Marcus said.
"I'm fine." Will," Marcus said with the exact tone he'd used 22 years ago when Will was pushing himself past the point of function and calling it capability. "You should eat something." Will looked at him. "All right," he said.
They walked out of the shop and down the street toward the diner. Two men, old friends, walking through a town that was holding its breath and waiting to find out what kind of town it was going to be. And above them, the November sky had gone from pale gray to a thin bright blue. The kind of blue that only shows up in Montana in cold weather, hard and clear and without any ambiguity at all. Emily was at the diner when they arrived.
She was off shift, but she was there anyway, sitting in the corner booth with Maggie and a coloring book. And when Will and Marcus came through the door, she looked up and her eyes moved from Will's face to Marcus' and back to Will's, reading the room the way she always did. Will came over to the booth. Marcus gave him the space by going to the counter and sitting down with the ease of a man who understood exactly when to be in a room and when to step out of the picture. Emily looked at Will.
"How did it go?" She said, keeping her voice low. Because Maggie was coloring with intense concentration and didn't need adult trouble in her Sunday afternoon. He said he needs to think, Will said. He has until this evening.
And if he decides wrong, then it gets harder before it gets easier, Will said. But it gets there. Emily looked at him for a moment. She looked at his face, the exhaustion in it, the 3 hours of sleep and the wait of the morning and the conversation that had just happened in his shop. Sit down, she said.
Maggie Will's here. Maggie looked up from her coloring book and held it up for his inspection without preamble. I'm coloring a horse, she said. I can see that, Will said. What color is it?
Purple, Maggie said as though this were the most obvious thing. Because I wanted it to be purple. Will sat down across from them. Patty appeared from behind the counter and put coffee in front of him without being asked, and he wrapped both hands around the mug and outside the window, Silver Creek moved through its Sunday with 31 motorcycles parked on its streets and its future unresolved, but tilting tilting towards something that felt for the first time in 6 weeks like the possibility of mourning. He drank his coffee.
Maggie colored her purple horse. Emily sat across from him and didn't say anything because she understood by now that some moments were for sitting in rather than filling. And Marcus Hayes sat at the counter and watched the door because that was what Marcus did. He'd always watched the door. Some men couldn't stop watching the door even when nothing was coming through it.
And Marcus Hayes was one of them. And Will Carter had always been grateful for it. He was grateful for it. Now outside, Silver Creek waited. And the waiting had a different quality now.
The quality of a town that had been reminded that it was not alone. That somewhere on the other end of 22 years of silence, there were people who came when you called, who drove through the night without being asked twice who sat at your counters and ate your eggs and made the room feel like a different kind of room than the one you'd been living inside. The clock on the diner wall said 1253. Brandon Keller had until evening to decide what kind of man he was going to be for the rest of his life. Will Carter drank his coffee and waited to find out.
The afternoon moved the way afternoons do when you're waiting for something that hasn't decided yet whether it's going to arrive as relief or catastrophe. Will finished his coffee. Maggie finished her purple horse and started on a second one, this time green, and explained to Will with four-year-old seriousness that green horses were faster than purple ones because grass was green and horses ate grass and that meant something. A logic that Will received without argument because he couldn't find a flaw in it that mattered. Marcus ate a second breakfast at the counter or what amounted to one toast and more coffee.
The refueling of a man who'd been riding since before dawn and had a long afternoon still ahead of him. He talked to Patty while he ate and Will watched them from the corner booth the easy conversation of two people who'd each spent decades running something and recognized in each other the specific fluency that produced. Patty laughed once, a real laugh. The first real one Will had heard from her in weeks. And Marcus didn't smile, but his eyes did the thing they did.
At 1:30, Will's phone rang. It was a number he recognized this time. Lou Baitman. Will Lou said, his voice had the particular quality of a man who had made a decision and was calling before he could unmake it. I need to tell you something.
Something I should have told Hutchkins weeks ago. Will said, "I'm listening. The first time Keller's man came in, Lou said I was so rattled I didn't think straight, but I had the security camera running, the one above the register. I've had it for 3 years and I almost never checked the footage, but I checked it the morning after because I was trying to understand what happened and I recorded the whole conversation. A pause.
I've got 12 minutes of Decker telling me exactly what would happen to the pharmacy if I didn't cooperate on camera with audio. Will was quiet for one second. Lou, he said, do not tell anyone else about this before you call Hutchkins. Call him right now. Tell him what you just told me.
You think it's useful? I think it's everything, Will said. He heard Lou exhale. Okay, Lou said. Okay, I'm calling him now.