Chapter 7

Cade set the Sharpie down.

He stood. The kid in the denim jacket said something to him and he didn't hear it. He walked past the signing table, past Boatwright, past the officer, to the door, and out, and the bell over it rang once.

The sidewalk was hot. The line had folded in on itself - three hundred people who had been waiting since ten in the morning - all of them now watching a man in a black western shirt stand in front of an old man in a navy windbreaker and not say anything.

Sunny came out behind him with the photograph.

"Mr. Merrick," Boatwright said, following. "Mr. Merrick, this is a store matter, I've got it handled-"

"Trey." Sunny's voice was flat. "Stop talking."

Cade looked at the old man.

Seventy-eight. Stooped. Brown cap. Pale blue eyes that he knew from somewhere in his own face, from the mirror he shaved in every morning on the bus. The burn scar near the left temple. The hands.

The hands.

Cade had spent thirty years looking for a man he barely remembered - a smell of solder, a radio on a workbench, a voice telling him the tone is in your hands. He had hired two private investigators. He had called his mother's cousins. He had driven to Amarillo once on a rumor and sat in a diner for six hours for nothing.

He had never once thought to look at the shop where he bought his first real guitar.

"Where'd you get the pickup?" he said.

Rue looked at the sidewalk.

"Sir. I asked you a question."

"I heard you."

"Where did you get it?"

"It's not for sale," Rue said.

"I don't want to buy it."

"Then we've got nothing to talk about."

Rue turned to go. The bus was at 3:40. It was 1:56. He had time. He had forty-one dollars, and a bench in Lockhart he'd promised a neighbor he'd help move on Thursday.

Boatwright stepped in front of him and put his hand flat on Rue's chest.

"Nobody walks away from this. You brought merchandise into my store-"

"It's not stolen," Cade said.

Everyone turned.

Cade was looking at the pickup in the officer's hand. Then at Sunny. Then at the photograph under her arm, which she had turned so the margin showed.

Cade's first.

He reached out and took it. The frame was heavier than he expected. The glass was warm from the sun. He looked at the young man on the step - twenty-five, maybe, lean, a toddler on his hip and a guitar in his other hand - and then he looked at the old man's face, and the geometry lined up in a way that made the street tilt.

"You're the one," Cade said. "You're the one who winds them."

Rue closed his eyes.