On his way back, he paused at Josie’s booth, leaning one hand against the top of the seat across from her. “Studying hard, huh?” he said. “Bet you’ve got the whole syllabus memorized by now.” “Something like that,” Josie said, not looking up. “You know, you could just talk to us sometimes. We’re not that bad.”
Josie set her pencil down and looked up at him, calm and unreadable. “I think you gave me a pretty clear idea of what you’re like the first night I came in here.” Something flickered across Dalton’s face. Quick and gone. “That was a joke. You take everything so seriously.” “Some things are worth taking seriously,” Josie said.
Dalton straightened up, glancing back at his booth, at Reed watching with obvious interest. At Nolan, who had gone very quiet. “Whatever,” he said, the easy grin returning, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “Suit yourself.” He walked back to his booth, and for a moment, the diner settled again. The ordinary hum of evening returning, the fryer hissing, the radio playing low.
Josie exhaled slowly, picked her pencil back up, and returned to her notes, though her hands weren’t quite as steady as they had been a few minutes before. Walter, watching from behind the counter, made a quiet decision that evening, one he wouldn’t fully act on for several more weeks, though its roots took hold that very night. He decided that whatever these boys thought they were building toward, he intended to make sure Josie never had to face the end of it alone.
She left not long after, packing her books carefully into her bag, the napkin tucked safely in her jacket pocket where it always rode these days. Close enough to feel against her side when she walked. Harold looked up from his crossword as she passed the counter. “Heading out already?” “Early class tomorrow,” Josie said. “Have a good night, sir.” “You too,” Harold said, then added almost as an afterthought. “You handle yourself well, you know. I’ve been coming in here a long while. Seen plenty of folks let this town push them around. You’re not one of them.”
Josie paused, surprised, unsure quite how to respond to that. “Thank you,” she said finally. “That means more than you probably know.” Harold smiled and returned to his puzzle. And Josie stepped out into the cool evening air, the bell ringing softly behind her, unaware that the old man at the counter had just spoken words that would, in a matter of weeks, prove far more prophetic than either of them could have guessed.
She walked home slowly under a sky just beginning to clear, thinking about her father, about Walter’s steady kindness, about the strange unexpected comfort of an old man’s crossword puzzle and a girl he barely knew. She thought, not for the first time since arriving in Milbrook, that maybe this town had more kindness folded into it than its share of cruelty. She just hoped, walking those last few blocks home in the dark, that the kindness would prove strong enough to matter when it counted most.
She had no way of knowing that quiet September night, exactly how soon that test would come, or how many people, quietly, in ways she hadn’t yet discovered, were already standing ready to stand with her when the moment finally arrived. Behind her, in the warm glow of the Lantern’s windows, Walter wiped down the counter one last time before closing, glancing now and then toward the door the way he always did these days, half expecting, half hoping that some piece of the past he still didn’t fully understand was about to come walking back through it.