The boy smiled. "Dad says you learned by breaking things."
"Your dad has an unreliable memory when it comes to who broke what."
"He says you once put a motorcycle together and had three bolts left over."
"Two bolts. And they belonged to something else."
Eli laughed. The sound made Cole feel almost embarrassed by how glad he was to hear it. He realized he had spent four days learning what made the child smile and had barely noticed the process. Eli liked mechanical puzzles, believed cornbread was superior to ordinary bread, and always inspected a room's windows before choosing where to sit. He had his father's curiosity and his mother's practical intelligence, and he was beginning to trust that an adult who said he would return might actually do so.
"I wanted to give you something," Eli said after a while.
He opened the backpack and took out the old photograph of Cole and Evan laughing beside the New Mexico highway. The cracked laminate shone in the firelight. Eli held it carefully, then stretched it toward Cole.
"That's yours," Cole said.
"I know."
"You've kept it a long time."
"Since I was six. Mom says I used to sleep with it under my pillow when I was younger, but she made me stop because I kept bending it."
"That's a good reason to keep it yourself."
Eli shook his head. "I have Dad now. Not like he was when that picture was taken, but I have him. You have all those years when you thought you'd lost him. I think you should have a picture of him laughing. You've got a lot of sad memories to catch up with."
Cole stared at the boy. He tried to think of a reply that would be neither too solemn nor too careless. Finally he took the photograph. On the back, Evan's handwriting remained clear despite the worn laminate: If my boy ever finds you, tell him his father never forgot.
"Thank you," Cole said.
"You're welcome."
He slipped it into the inner pocket beside his own picture of Evan sitting alone in the desert. Two images from the same day, one full of laughter, the other weighted with thought. Cole had carried only the second for eight years. Now he possessed both, and the difference felt significant. He had allowed grief to preserve only the version of his friend who looked troubled and distant. Eli had given him the laughing one back.
"Can I tell you something?" the boy asked.
"Of course."
"When I touched your patch in the diner, you looked scared."
Cole considered denying it. He could claim surprise or confusion. Those would be true, but incomplete. Eli had earned better than incomplete answers from the adults who loved his father.
"I was scared," Cole admitted. "Not of you. I was scared because I'd told myself a story about what happened to your dad for so many years that I didn't know who I'd be if the story turned out to be wrong."