Chapter 8

Nobody said anything for a moment. A truck went by on South Congress. Somewhere down the block, a band was soundchecking through an open window.

"Winds what?" Boatwright said.

Sunny went back inside and came out with the drawer.

She set it on the hood of the shop's delivery van - shallow, wooden, lined with felt, holding thirty-one small paper sleeves and thirty-one cards. She didn't have to explain. Cade picked up the first sleeve, slid the pickup out, and held it next to the one in Officer Delgado's palm.

Same baseplate. Same cloth-covered lead. Same wire, wound at the same tension, the same tight shoulder at the edge where a thumb had guided the last layer home. And on the bobbin, a hair to the right of the second slug, the same small scratch from the same slipped screwdriver.

"These are from the same spool," Cade said.

"Yes," Sunny said.

"And the one in my guitar."

"Yes."

Cade looked at the cards. Thirty-one. All the same blue ink. Happy 13th. Happy 14th. Happy 15th - the year he quit for eight months, worked at a Whataburger, and thought he'd never play again. Happy 21st. Happy 30th. Happy 40th. No signature. No return address. No phone number. Every one postmarked from a different small town in West Texas, which he had always assumed was a prank, or a fan, or a joke being played on a kid who didn't have a father.

"Sunny." His voice came out wrong. "How long have you had these?"

"Since 2002."

"Why didn't you-"

"Because of this." She took a folded piece of paper from her apron pocket, softened with handling, and gave it to him. Block letters. Thirty-one years old.

Please don't tell him who these are from. Keep them for him if he won't take them. He'll know what they are. I don't want anything from him. - R.

Cade read it twice.

"I didn't know it was him," Sunny said. "I suspected. I never had a face. I had a photograph on my wall and a note with an R on it, and I wasn't going to hand you a guess and watch you lose him twice."

Delgado had put his notebook away. He was looking at the drawer with the expression of a man who had come to a shoplifting call and landed somewhere else entirely.

Boatwright found his voice. "This is a family thing. It doesn't change that he was in possession of-"

"Trey," Sunny said. "Give it back."

Boatwright lifted the pickup above the old man's open hand. Rue had put his palm out the moment Cade said the word - the same way he'd held it out for the bag. Palm up. Patient. Fingers open.

Boatwright did not let go.

"Put it in his hand," Cade said.

"Mr. Merrick, with respect, I need to document the-"

"Put it in his hand."

"No," Rue said.

Everybody looked at him.

"Hold on." His voice was dry, quiet, the voice of a man who had rehearsed a sentence for thirty-one years and never once intended to say it. "I didn't come here to be forgiven."

Cade's mouth opened.

"I came to leave it on the counter." Rue nodded at the pickup in Boatwright's fingers. "That one. That's the last one I can wind. My hands are done. Arthritis took the fine work three years ago and I finished this one anyway, slow, over four months, because I wanted the set complete." He looked at the drawer. "Thirty-one mailed. One carried. That was all of it. I was going to set it by the register and catch the bus."

"You were going to leave it and go," Cade said.

"That was the whole of it."

"You weren't going to say anything."

"There's nothing to say that pays for anything."

Cade stood there with a card in one hand and a photograph in the other, and the sun came off the glass counter and into his eyes, and he did not wipe his face.

Then he turned to the manager and said it again.

"Give it back to him."