Walt stood in the cold until Margaret's car pulled up beside him. "Get in," she said. "You're not walking home in this frost like a tragic poem."
He got in. Dale drove. Margaret talked. Walt watched the dark fields slide past and felt, for the first time in three years, that the night had not ended when he expected it to.
Friday morning arrived with a pale sun and a wind that smelled of snow that had not yet decided to fall. Walt fed the cattle, checked the trough heaters, and stood in the kitchen of the ranch house staring at Eleanor's fiddle case in the corner of the living room where it had lived like a quiet guest. He opened it. The wood smelled of old resin and time. He closed it again, gently, and drove into Lexington with a list that included feed and coffee and nothing he was ready to name.
The diner sat on the corner near the grain elevator, chrome and Formica and a waitress named Dot who had known Walt since he was tall enough to see over the counter. Ruth was already in a booth by the window, auburn waves loose, cropped suede jacket over a sweater the color of dried corn. Brown smoky liner. Glossy terracotta lips. A notebook open beside her coffee, pen uncapped.
"You came," she said.