Jack did not step back, and he did not step forward. He stood in the garage doorway with one hand on the metal door, as if he were holding it in place, and looked at the four men the way a man looks at a road he once travelled and thought he would never travel again. Then, slowly, he let the door rise the rest of the way and turned back into the garage without a word, leaving the opening behind him like an invitation that had not quite been given. Gravel glanced at the others, and then they followed, one by one, ducking under the door frame, their boots loud on the concrete, their eyes adjusting to the dimness inside. The garage smelled of oil and dust and old leather, and it was cooler than the yard outside, and quieter, the way rooms are quiet when they have been kept closed for a long time.
There was a battered coffee pot on a hot plate in the corner, and a row of mismatched mugs on a shelf, and Jack filled the pot with water from a jug and set it to heat without asking whether anyone wanted coffee. He watched Jack move around the garage with the economy of a man who lives alone and has pared his movements down to what is necessary, and he thought about how much had been pared away from this man in the years since they had last stood in a room together. Jack did not look at them while he worked.
They sat, eventually, on what the garage offered: a stool, an upturned crate, a folding chair with a frayed seat, the edge of a workbench. Gravel took the stool, because his leg needed it, and set his hands on his knees, and held the room steady the way a road captain holds a formation — not by talking, but by being the still point the others could ride around. Torch took the crate and said nothing, watching hands, watching the door, watching Jack's face in the moments when Jack thought no one was watching. Rex stood for a while near the door, as if he were not sure he belonged inside, and then he sat on the workbench edge, and folded his arms, and waited. Dutch sat on the folding chair, and the chair creaked under his weight, and he tried three times to begin, and three times the beginning fell apart in his mouth.
I've thought about this, he said at last, and then stopped, because it was not true enough. He had thought about Jack, yes, but thinking about a man is not the same as coming to him, and Dutch knew the difference, and the knowing sat in his face like shame. "I mean, we've all —" he tried again, and then he looked at Jack, and Jack was looking at him with an expression that was not anger and not welcome, but something in between, something guarded and tired, and Dutch felt the words dry up entirely. He looked down at his hands, big hands, scarred hands, hands that had once been good at fixing things and had never learned how to fix this. "I'm sorry," he said finally, and it came out small, smaller than he meant it to be, and he hated how small it sounded against fifteen years.
Jack poured the coffee. The pot shook a little in his hand, and he steadied it, and poured four mugs, and set them on the workbench without ceremony. He did not pour one for himself, or if he did, he set it aside and forgot it. He leaned against the bench with his arms crossed, and for a long moment he said nothing, and the silence in the garage was the kind that men who have lived alone learn to live inside — not hostile, not warm, simply the air of a room that has not had to make space for anyone else in a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough, the voice of a man who had not used it much lately, and it carried no performance at all.
You came a long way, he said. It was not a question, and it was not an accusation. It was a fact, laid on the bench between them like a tool. "Yeah," Gravel said. "We did." Jack nodded, once, as if that settled something and nothing at the same time. "Emily told you where to find me," he said, and again it was not a question. Dutch nodded. "She did." Jack looked toward the garage door, toward the light and the gravel drive and the broken gate, and for a second his face softened in a way that had nothing to do with the men in the room and everything to do with his daughter. "She worries too much," he said. "She always has." Nobody answered that, because there was nothing to answer it with that would not sound like an excuse.