"What did he say exactly?" Cole asked.
Mara looked up. "Why?"
"Because I knew Cain. I want to understand what he told you."
"He said some men were made for the road and some were made for home. He said Evan had tried to be both and couldn't. Then he offered to send money for Eli, like that made the disappearance respectable." She gave a tired, humorless laugh. "I told him to keep it."
Cole lowered his eyes. He could imagine Cain delivering those lines, his voice grave, his expression full of manufactured concern. He could imagine believing him, too, which was perhaps the most frightening part.
"I should have looked harder," Cole said.
Mara shook her head. "You weren't his wife. You had no way to know what was happening in our house. I don't need another man taking responsibility for what Evan did. I need the truth."
Cole accepted the correction. There was an enormous difference between regret and the right to make another person's suffering about yourself. He had been guilty of confusing those two things before.
Eli had grown quiet. He was listening intently while pretending to inspect the bottom of his bowl. Cole watched him for a moment, then decided to ask something less painful.
"You've got a backpack full of important papers?"
"Only some." Eli brightened slightly. "And a compass I made in school. It doesn't work very well."
"Most school compasses don't."
"Dad said a real compass points north, but the patch means finding home. I read that in one of his notes."
"Sounds like something he'd say."
Eli unfastened the carabiner and carefully opened his backpack. Inside were a pencil case, two damp notebooks, a small plastic bag containing crayons, and a wallet-sized photograph protected by cracked laminate. He took the photograph out with both hands, holding it at the edges as if he had practiced a hundred times.
Cole recognized the place before he recognized himself. It was a stretch of highway outside Mora, New Mexico, where the land flattened beneath an enormous sky. He had pulled over with Evan after a long ride because the light made the mountains look closer than they were. A passing couple had offered to take their picture. Cole had stood beside his motorcycle, sunburned and grinning, while Evan had put an arm around his shoulders and laughed at something Cole could no longer remember.
For a moment the diner disappeared. Cole smelled desert dust warming beneath sunlight and gasoline on his gloves. He heard Evan's laugh and the rasp of an old camera winding forward. In the photograph both men looked younger than their ages, not because they had been innocent, but because neither had yet learned how permanent some consequences could become.
"That's him," Eli said. "That's my dad."