The woman's phone rang. She closed her eyes before answering, as though the sound itself had cost her something. Cole did not intend to listen, but there were too few people in the diner and too many pauses in the music for the conversation to remain private.
"You said the part would be here tonight," she told someone. She listened, rubbed her forehead, and lowered her voice. "I understand there's a delay. I'm asking whether you can tell me how long. No, we don't have a place to stay. I didn't expect to be stranded halfway there."
The boy reached across the table and rested his hand over hers. The gesture was so small and practical that Cole looked away. He had no desire to intrude on the narrow space of dignity the woman was trying to preserve for herself and her child.
When Della returned, he ordered chili and cornbread. She took one look at his stiff shoulder and quietly filled his mug before he had asked. He ate slowly. The chili was too salty and exactly what he needed; its heat reached places the coffee had missed. He heard the door open twice, felt cool air wash across the back of the room, and saw two riders enter and take a booth without acknowledging him. He knew one of their faces from an old gathering in Nevada, but neither man wore anything suggesting they had come for him.
The boy's boots made their first soft sound on the diner floor while Cole was concentrating on the last of his chili. At first he mistook it for someone walking toward the restroom. Then the footsteps stopped directly behind his stool. Cole felt a faint touch against his back, low on the vest, and every instinct acquired over years on unpredictable roads tightened at once.
He turned. The boy was standing close enough to touch him again, gazing at the silver compass patch as though it were an address he had memorized. Cole's first feeling was caution. His second was an unreasonable and immediate sorrow, one he did not understand until the child's face became clear under the overhead light.
"Hey, buddy," he said gently. "You need something?"
The boy did not answer at first. He followed the stitched points of the compass with his eyes, counted them silently, and looked up at Cole's face. There was fear there, but it was tangled with expectation. The boy had already made a decision by walking across the diner; now he seemed frightened that the person who ought to understand it might not.
"I found you," he said.
Cole straightened a little. "Found who?"
"Dad's best friend."
The words landed in the small silence between them. Cole's spoon knocked against his bowl. Della stopped halfway along the counter with the coffeepot in her hand. The two riders at the far booth looked over, then turned their eyes away in the polite but unmistakable way people do when they realize they have witnessed something private.
"What's your name?" Cole asked.