It was an unfamiliar engine. Not Graham's broad, uneven rumble, not Derek's sharper exhaust, but a low, steady sound followed by silence. Cassie looked out and saw a man in his late fifties swing off a dark blue motorcycle. He wore a plain black jacket with no colors, faded jeans, and a helmet whose visor had been scratched by years of use. He stood beside the bike for a full minute before approaching the door.
When he reached the threshold, he put one hand against the frame. It was an unguarded movement, the gesture of someone confirming that an old place remained solid after time had changed nearly everything else. He looked through the glass, saw Cassie standing by the table, and hesitated. Then he opened the door.
"You must be Cassie," he said.
"I am."
"Tommy Ellis." His smile appeared briefly and then faded. "Heard you've been asking people a lot of questions."
Cassie stood, suddenly conscious that she was alone with the man whose name had changed her father's face. Tommy was tall but beginning to stoop a little at the shoulders. His hair had thinned and gone gray at the temples, and his hands were marked by old cuts that looked familiar to her from Graham's. His eyes moved across the room with a mixture of recognition and uncertainty.
"My dad said you might call," Cassie answered.
"I figured I'd already wasted fifteen years trying to find the right words on the phone." Tommy gave a shaky laugh. "Thought I might do better if I actually came through the door."
Cassie glanced at the photo boxes. "Do you want me to get somebody?"
"Maybe in a minute." He looked at the wall above the bar. "They still have that picture."
She followed his gaze to a photograph from the early nineties: a muddy line of motorcycles in front of an old mountain lodge, with Tommy standing beside Graham and Hank. The men in the photograph looked cold and thoroughly pleased with themselves.
"We were stuck there two days," Tommy said. "Bridge washed out. Graham insisted the snow would stop by breakfast. It stopped two breakfasts later."
Cassie smiled. "That sounds like him."
Tommy looked at her properly. "You look like your mother."
"Everybody says that."
"But you've got his eyes when you ask a question." He paused. "He never told me much about you."
"We haven't exactly been in touch with you."
Tommy accepted the correction with a nod. "No. We haven't."
Graham's truck rolled into the parking lot a moment later. Cassie saw him pull beside Tommy's bike, then sit motionless behind the steering wheel. He climbed out slowly. His leather work jacket hung open over a gray shirt, and there was a tool bag in his hand as though he had been halfway through an ordinary afternoon when the past had arrived.
The door opened. Graham stopped just inside it.
"Tommy."
"Graham."
Fifteen years passed in the three feet between them. Cassie could feel it in the silence, in the way Tommy's hands remained awkwardly at his sides, in her father's refusal to hide his uncertainty behind a joke. She realized that both men were frightened of the wrong word, and that neither of them had much practice admitting it.
At last Graham lifted his tool bag. "You want coffee?"
Tommy took a breath. "Yeah. I could use coffee."