Sarah studied the young man across the counter. "How old are you, Evan?"
"Twenty-three."
"You have family?"
"My mother in Barstow. She thinks I'm hauling parts for a motorcycle shop."
"Then maybe tonight would be a good time to call her and tell her where you really are."
He shook his head immediately. "I can't put her into this."
"You don't have to tell her everything," Sarah said. "Tell her you're safe. Tell her you need to think. There's nothing disloyal about letting somebody who loves you know you're alive."
Evan looked toward Wyatt, whose eyes remained fixed on the counter. When Wyatt finally spoke, his voice held an unexpected gentleness.
"Do what she says, kid. Not because I said it. Because she's right."
Evan went outside to make the call. Sarah watched him through the window, standing beneath the diner sign with one shoulder against the wall. His face changed while he listened, and she wondered whether his mother could hear enough in his voice to understand that something terrible had almost happened.
"You could send him away," she told Wyatt.
"I could. He'd go back to Graham if he thought he didn't have anywhere else."
"And what are you going to do?"
Wyatt looked toward the dark road. "I used to know. Whatever my brother wanted, I'd find a way to make it work without making the mess worse. I told myself I was containing him."
"Were you?"
"Sometimes. Other times I was just making sure the consequences fell on somebody else."
It was the first admission Sarah had heard that sounded like responsibility rather than an explanation. She did not congratulate him. She thought of all the unseen people who had paid for the deals he had helped keep moving, and she knew one evening of honesty could not erase them.
They spoke until the kitchen clock crept toward eleven. Wyatt told her a little more about Graham, about their mother's absence and the first motorcycles they had rebuilt from spare parts. Sarah told him how Martin used to sit on the steps at night and identify the few stars that remained visible above the desert's haze. Every so often, one of them stopped talking long enough to listen to the wind.
At last Sarah stood and turned off the main lights. She checked the workshop doors, the cooler, and the breaker panel, following a routine so familiar that she could have performed it with her eyes closed. Wyatt carried a folded cot into the office and closed the door behind him without making any sound.
Sarah went upstairs to the small apartment over the diner. Her bedroom window faced the salvage yard, where the old trucks and rusted cars stood in tilted rows like an audience waiting for a performance. She washed the grease from her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She had small creases at the corners of her eyes from years of squinting into sunlight, and a streak of white dust ran across her cheek where she had wiped away sweat.