Toby stepped inside. “I was trying to help.”
Sarah started to answer, then saw Silas behind him.
Every muscle in her face changed.
She did not merely recognize a biker. She recognized a face.
Silas saw it happen.
Her hand tightened around the armrest. Her eyes went to his patch, then to his hair, then back to his eyes. For one second, neither adult seemed capable of speaking.
“Mom?” Toby said.
Sarah whispered one word.
“Silas.”
Toby looked between them.
Silas stepped inside and removed his sunglasses.
“You know me.”
Sarah's breathing quickened. The oxygen machine continued its mechanical sigh, indifferent to the fact that fifteen years had just collapsed into a living room.
Silas took the silver lighter from the console of memory, metaphorically still between them, but physically from his pocket now. He placed it on the coffee table.
Sarah closed her eyes.
When she opened them, tears had gathered there.
“My name is Silas Cole,” he said. “I think you were married to my brother.”
Sarah nodded.
Toby stood perfectly still.
Silas pulled a wooden chair away from the small dining table and sat across from her. His knees nearly touched the coffee table.
“His name was Elias,” Sarah said before Silas could ask.
“Yes.”
“And he was your brother.”
“Yes.”
“I knew eventually this might happen.”
Silas's voice hardened. “Then start at the beginning.”
Sarah looked at Toby.
Toby shook his head. “Do not send me away.”
“Toby—”
“No.” His voice broke, and he hated that it did. “I found the box. I went to that place. Everybody knows things about my dad except me. Do not send me away.”
Sarah flinched as though he had struck her.
Silas said quietly, “He stays.”
Sarah stared at him.
“If what you are about to tell me is his life too,” Silas continued, “he stays.”
For once, Sarah did not argue.
She adjusted the oxygen tubing beneath her nose and took several slow breaths before speaking.
“I met Elias in March of 1973.”
Silas's eyes narrowed with the precision of a man measuring dates.
“I was seventeen,” Sarah continued. “Too young, yes. I know how that sounds now. I was working mornings at a diner outside Tehachapi because my mother had left and my father drank most of what he earned. Elias came in after sunrise three days in a row.”
“What diner?”
“June's Place. It is gone now.”