Ray arrived at seven, and he took the stool beside her, and he ordered coffee too, and he said, "How's the corner?" and she said, "It's a good corner," and he said, "I told you it would be," and they sat together, and they talked, about the ride, about the lake, about the church lot, about nothing in particular, and the evening went on, and the bar filled, and the music played, and the lot outside filled with motorcycles, and the orange lights came on, and Evelyn stayed until the lights went orange, which was later than she had planned, and earlier than she wanted to leave, and when she finally stood up, and put on her jacket, and picked up her helmet, Murphy said, from behind the bar, "Same time next Friday, Evelyn?" and she said, "Same time next Friday, Murphy," and she meant it, and the meaning of it surprised her, because it was a plan, made more than a few days ahead, and she had not made a plan like that in years.
She rode home in the dark, with the wind clean off the fields, and the sky wide above her, and the headlight cutting a clean cone through the night, and she thought of Daniel, not as a ghost, but as a memory she could carry, the way you carry a note in your pocket, or a name in your head, or a story you have heard a hundred times and still want to hear again. She thought of the Pacific story, and the cracked visor, and the salt, and the cheap coffee, and she thought of the mountain roads Daniel had described, and the small towns, and the diners with bells on the doors, and she thought, for the first time, without sadness, that she might someday ride one of those roads herself, and that the thought did not frighten her, and that the absence of fright was itself a kind of arrival.
When she got home, she put the bike in the garage, and she covered it, and she went inside, and she called Grace, and she said, "I stayed until the lights went orange," and Grace said, "Good," and Evelyn said, "I'll go back next Friday," and Grace said, "I know you will," and they hung up, and Evelyn stood in the kitchen, with the framed note on the wall beside her, and she looked at the four words, and she smiled, a small, private smile, because the words had not changed, but she had, and the change was hers, and it was real, and it was enough, for that Friday, and for the Fridays that would follow.
Cody Reyes arrived at Murphy's on a Friday three weeks later, and he arrived the way a man arrives when he wants the whole lot to know he has arrived.
His bike was new, and loud, and painted a bright, metallic blue that caught the orange lot lights and threw them back, hard and glittering. His leather was new, too, the kind of new that still smells of the shop, with patches sewn on in straight, even rows, as if they had been placed by someone who had read about patches rather than earned them. He wore sunglasses after sunset, which the older riders noticed, and which they did not comment on, because the older riders had learned, over a long time, that commenting on a young man's sunglasses is a waste of breath. He parked in the middle of the lot, where everyone could see him, and he revved the engine once, too hard, and he grinned, and his friends parked around him, in a loose circle, the way a group parks when it wants to be a group, and to be seen being a group.
The group called themselves the Night Riders. They were not a club. They had no president, no patch that meant anything to anyone outside their own circle, no history, no rules except the ones they made up as they went along. They were four young men with new bikes and new leather and money to spend on Fridays, and they came to Murphy's because Murphy's was where the riders came, and because being seen at Murphy's, among the older riders, made them feel like riders, in a way that riding alone, on an empty road, did not.
Cody was twenty-seven, the leader, loud and showy, everything about him saying he wanted to be noticed. Jake Miller was twenty-six, Cody's friend, who followed Cody and laughed too loudly at Cody's jokes, and who filmed things on his phone, as if filming a thing made it more real. Luis Vega was twenty-eight, quieter, the one who laughed a beat too late, as if he were checking first to see whether the joke was funny. Brent Hall was twenty-nine, the fourth of the group, mostly a witness, the one who drove when the others had drunk too much, and who said little, and noticed more than he let on.
Evelyn was already there. She had parked in the far corner, as she always did, and she had gone inside, and she was sitting at the bar with a coffee, talking to Ray, when the new bikes came in, and the lot went louder, and the music from the jukebox had to compete with the engines, and Murphy, behind the bar, looked up, and looked at the door, and then looked at Evelyn, and then went back to wiping a glass, in the slow, careful way he wiped glasses when he was thinking.