Chapter 9: The Return
Two hours out of Phoenix, the city let go of her. The traffic thinned, the billboards gave up, and State Route 77 unrolled across the desert like a dropped ribbon. Saguaros stood along the shoulders with their arms raised, and the heat pressed shimmering waves off the asphalt even though it was barely ten in the morning. Sadie Quinn kept both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the white line, and every twenty miles or so she reached into the pocket of her jeans to make sure the stone was still there.
Smooth. Thumb-sized. Warm from her own skin. She had carried it in her desk drawer for six years and told herself that was enough. It was not.
"You don't have to do this today," Paula had said in the office doorway, arms folded, voice even.
"I know," Sadie had answered. "I have to."
She had told no one where she was going. Some things you drove to alone.
The turnoff sign said JUNIPER FLATS, POP. 2,318, and somebody had shot a pellet through the three. Sadie smiled before she could stop herself. Then the smile faded, because the main street was quieter and sadder than she remembered. The hardware store had plywood in the windows. The motel sign buzzed with half its letters dead. She slowed at the corner, and there it was, faded turquoise paint peeling in the sun, the coyote mural on the side wall bleached to a ghost of itself.
The Blue Coyote CafΓ©. Standing.
She parked across the street and sat with the engine off. Her heart was doing something ridiculous. She was twenty-nine, a licensed civil engineer, afraid to walk into a diner.
"You came all this way," she said out loud. "Get out of the car, Sadie."
The door's brass bell rang when she pushed inside, the same bright clatter she remembered, and the smell hit her like a wave: green-chile stew, coffee, grease, lemon cleaner. Red vinyl booths. The counter with its row of stools. And behind it, wiping a glass with a dish towel, a man with iron-gray hair cut short, deep lines around his eyes, an apron tied over a flannel shirt.
Older. Thinner. His left leg moved stiffly when he shifted his weight.
He looked up. The glass stopped moving in his hands.
"Sadie?" he said.
She stood in the doorway with the bell still swinging behind her and forgot every word she had rehearsed on the drive. Twenty years of practice, gone in one look.
"Hi, Gus," she said, and her voice cracked on the second word, and she hated it, and she did not care.
He came around the counter faster than a man his age had any business moving, and then his arms were around her, and she was nine years old again, smelling stew and dish soap, and she was twenty-nine, and both things were true at once.
"You grew," he said into her hair, and laughed, a rough sound. "Lord, you grew."
"You shrank," she said, and he laughed harder, and then they were both crying a little and pretending not to be, the way people do when it matters.
Rosa came out of the kitchen with a tray and stopped dead. "Ay, Dios," she whispered, and set the tray down anywhere, and hugged Sadie so hard her ribs complained. "Look at you. Look at you."
"I can't believe this place," Sadie said, looking around. "It smells exactly the same."
"That's the stew," Gus said. "Same pot. Same me."
"Same bell," Sadie said.
"Don't touch the bell," Gus said, deadpan. "I just fixed it."
They sat her at the counter, the third stool from the register, and Rosa poured coffee without asking, and Gus stood across from her with his hands flat on the counter, and for a moment nobody said anything. Twenty years sat between them like another person at the table.
"You look good," Gus said finally. "Phoenix agrees with you."
"It has its moments," Sadie said. "You look tired, old man."
"I am tired, young lady. What's your excuse?"
She smiled, and then her hand went into her pocket, and the smile went quiet. She felt the smooth surface against her thumb one more time. Then she drew out the turquoise stone and set it on the counter between them.
The little click it made on the laminate was the loudest sound in the room.
Gus stared at it. His face did something complicated. He reached out one rough finger and touched it, just touched it, the way you touch something that might not be real.
"Where did you get that?" he whispered.
"You gave it to me," Sadie said. "Twenty years ago. A girl with bottle caps and no money, and you fed her anyway."
He picked it up. Turned it over in his palm. His throat worked.
"Keep it in your pocket," he said softly. "When the world gets loud, you hold it and remember somebody in Juniper Flats believed in you."
"I remember," Sadie said. "I remembered every single day."
"Elena would have liked to see this," he said. "She would have liked to see you."
Sadie's eyes stung. "I heard about Elena," she said. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."
"You were nine," Gus said, gently. "You were exactly where you were."
Rosa cried openly now, wiping her eyes with her apron. Big Sal, at the end of the counter, studied his newspaper very hard.
"Say it," Sadie said suddenly, her voice fierce. "Say the thing you said."
Gus looked at her, and his face settled, the way it settles when a long wait ends.
"I'll be here," he said.
"I'll come back for you," Sadie said. "I came back."
"Twenty years," Gus said, and shook his head, and laughed, and the laugh broke. "You took your sweet time, kid."
She came around the counter then, stone and all, and hugged him again, and this time neither of them pretended not to cry.