I've got a thermos in the truck. It's black, but I've got sugar packets in the glove compartment. I can't do much about the lack of cream out here, but I'm asking so I know what to offer." Derek Morrison stared at her, and then something happened in his face that she suspected didn't happen often. The hard outer shell of a man who'd spent years making himself unreadable cracked open just slightly, just enough to show something underneath that was younger and less armored and entirely completely human.
"Black's fine," he said quietly. "Good. Me, too." She cut through the last chain. "Earl always said adding milk to good coffee was like adding water to good whiskey.
Destroys the point entirely. Earl, your husband? Was. He passed 4 years ago. Sorry for your loss.
Thank you. She helped him find his footing, which he didn't strictly need but seemed to appreciate as a gesture. He would have liked you boys. He had a thing for people everybody else thought were trouble. She got them to the shade first.
The western wall of the repair shop caught a pocket of shadow in the late afternoon, and she had them sit there while she made three trips to the truck for water bottles, the thermos, and the paper bag of gas station sandwiches she'd bought in town that morning. For reasons she couldn't have explained at the time beyond the vague instinct that the day might run long. Marcus, she'd finally learned his name from one of the others, sat with his back against the wall and drank two full bottles of water without stopping. Then he sat quietly with his eyes closed for a long moment, and Evelyn gave him that time without filling it with words. Around them the heat sat on the landscape like something solid.