Page 65 of Denied

He sat there with his phone in his hand and looked at her.

“Taken,” he said.

“Don’t make a thing of it.”

“I’m not making a thing of it. I’m sitting on a step.” He put the phone in his pocket. “You told a deputy you were taken before you told me.”

“I told you Saturday.”

“You told me you were staying. That’s not taken.”

“It’s the same thing, Brody,” she said, and got up, and went in to see about the plate she’d put down at eight-thirty.

She told the table herself.

He’d have done it. He’d have stood at the end of the table and said it plain, the way he’d told Greene, and she’d looked at him when the old man sat down and shook her head, once, and he’d shut his mouth. So it was her, at the stove, with her back to them, dishing up, and she said it to the pan.

“There’s a man in town asking for me. He followed me from Indianapolis. He hasn’t broken a law and he won’t, and I’ve told Ryder Davis, and Ryder’s been out and taken it down, and I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it from Pearl.” She put the potatoes on the table. “That’s all. Eat.”

Nobody ate.

Dean put his fork down. Chase looked at Brody. Remi looked at her plate, because she’d known since eight. Lara, at the far end, with her feet up and her hand on her middle, said, “Sunny,” very quietly, and Sunny said, “Not now, Lara,” and Lara stopped.

The old man looked at his plate a long time. Then he looked up the table at her.

“Followed you from Indiana?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hasn’t broken a law?”

“No, sir. He’s careful.”

“Uh huh.” John picked up his fork. “Dean. That rifle of mine’s in the hall closet where it’s been since your mother passed. Put it by the door.” He put a potato on his fork. “Eat, Levi. Your supper’s getting cold.”

Levi ate. Dean got up without a word and went to the hall closet. He came back, and the rifle went beside the back door, leaning, where the old man could see it from his chair. John looked at it once, nodded, went on with his potato, and the table ate.

Sunny stood at the stove with the pan in her hand and her back to all of it. Brody watched her shoulders. They went down about an inch, and stayed down. She turned around, put the pan in the sink, sat down in Helen’s chair, and ate her supper.

He went to Pearl’s on Friday.

Not to do anything. He said that to Earl on the phone at six, and to Sunny in his room at five, and to himself in the truck, and he believed it about as much as they did. He went because the man had gone to Pearl’s, and would go again, because a man who sits outside a house three nights out of five is a man who goes back to the same counter, and Brody wanted to be on a stool with a coffee when he did, and not do anything.

Pearl’s was full at seven. It was never full at seven. There was a man from the bank in a booth who’d never eaten breakfast out in his life, and Wes from the feed lot, and two of the Wainwright hands, and Earl, at the end of the counter, with a paper he wasn’t reading, and Marge going up and down behind it with the pot, and Pearl on the register with a look on her he’d never seen, which was Pearl not talking.

He sat down at the counter. Marge put a cup in front of him and filled it and didn’t say anything, and he drank it.

The rental car went past at seven-ten, slow, and stopped, and a man got out.

Forty. Good jacket. He came up the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and a face you’d let hold your baby. He looked in Pearl’s front window at a full room. The full room looked back at him, every head, the banker, Wes, the Wainwright boys, Earl over his paper. Nobody moved. Nobody said one word. Brody sat on his stool with his back to the window, watching the man’s face in the mirror behind the pie case, and didn’t turn around.

The man looked at the room a while. He looked at the door. He put his hand on it.

Pearl came out from behind the register. She walked to the door, in front of the whole room, and turned the sign around from OPEN to CLOSED, and looked at him through the glass, and went back to the register, and picked up her pen.

He stood there. Then he took his hand off the door, smiled at nobody, went back down the sidewalk to the rental, got in, and drove on up Main toward Harvey’s, which wasn’t going to be open either. The room let its breath out.

“Well,” Earl said, to his paper.