Nolan made rice for breakfast because rice was what he had, washed the pot, and sat at the table looking at the map. He had counted the miles the previous night: a little over two hours if the roads were clear, more if he missed a turning. The tank held enough fuel to reach the diner and perhaps get home, though not comfortably.
At noon he put the wrapped object back into the metal box without opening it. At three he checked his truck's oil and tire pressure, habits he followed even when he could not afford to replace what needed replacing. At four he drove away, past the school where Carla had once worked and the laundromat where she had washed his winter coat after the dryer at home broke. He found himself slowing at each familiar landmark, as though the town wanted to remind him that his mother had been real before it allowed him to discover a stranger. He drove on.
The roads narrowed beyond the highway. Farms appeared behind stands of trees, their fields turned dark by an early autumn rain. The GPS insisted the Blackbird Diner was somewhere ahead, then abruptly changed its mind and sent him along a gravel track ending at a locked agricultural gate. Nolan reversed, found the county road again, and followed the map instead. Twice he nearly missed the turning because the sign was faded and partially hidden by branches. Finally an orange neon bird emerged through the dusk, its wings trembling with an electrical flicker.
The diner sat where the map said it would, low and weathered, with steamed windows and a gravel parking area shining under the wet evening sky. A handwritten board advertised meatloaf and coffee. The place looked ordinary until Nolan saw the motorcycles. They stood in two disciplined rows along the building, heavy touring bikes, old cruisers, machines with road dust worked deep into their metal, some polished and some not. He counted more than twenty before losing track, and that alone was enough to make him drive to the far end of the lot and turn off his engine.
He sat there eleven minutes. The dashboard clock gave him something to study while he invented reasons to go home. Perhaps the photograph meant nothing. Perhaps the man had been a friend of Carla's rather than Nolan's father. Perhaps the club would be furious that someone had kept an old vest, or perhaps none of its current members remembered a man who vanished twenty-two years before. He imagined his mother watching him hesitate and could almost hear her saying that fear did not change what had to be done.
He picked up the box. The cold struck as soon as he opened his truck door, damp and sharp enough to enter through the seams of his jacket. His boots made a grinding sound in the gravel.