Chapter 158: Texas Air

The thing about Texas was that it didn't ease you in. It just started—flat and wide and indifferent, the sky bigger than it had any right to be, the road stretching out ahead like it had given up on destinations and was just going for the principle of the thing.

Del had been watching it for two hours.

Oliver drove with one hand on the wheel, and the window cracked an inch, which let in a dry heat that was different from what she'd grown up with. Not humid. Just relentless.

"You're staring at nothing," Oliver said.

"I'm staring at Texas."

"Same thing."

Del almost smiled. "It's bigger than I expected."

"Everything here is bigger than expected."

She looked at him sideways. Oliver, in a good mood, was a specific and somewhat dangerous thing. He was easier, funnier, more like the version of himself she'd met in the coffee shop. It made her feel two things simultaneously, and neither of them was simple.

She'd been doing a lot of that lately. Feeling two things at once. It was exhausting.

They'd stopped for gas an hour back and barely spoken. This was the first real conversation of the morning, if you could call it that. Del had been saving her words, spending a lot of time in her own head, and the conversation felt like it required more of her than she currently had available.

"We should eat," Oliver said. "Properly. Not gas station stuff."

"You say gas station stuff like it's beneath you."

"It is beneath me."

"You've eaten four bags of chips in the last two days."

"That was circumstantial." He checked his mirror. "There's a diner at the next exit. Actual food. Eggs, maybe. Something with a plate."

Del looked at the exit sign coming up ahead. "Fine."

The diner was the kind of place that had probably looked the same for thirty years and was proud of that fact. A low building with a gravel lot, a hand-painted sign, and booths with cracked vinyl seats in a red that had faded to something closer to rust.

They took a booth near the back. The place was quiet—a couple of truckers at the counter, an older woman in the corner with a newspaper, and a man by the window nursing coffee.

Oliver set his bag on the seat beside him. He always kept it close — never checked it, never left it unattended.

The waitress came and went. Del ordered eggs and toast. Oliver ordered something larger, because he always did, in the same way he always took the seat that faced the door. She took note of it, among other things.

"You're quiet," Oliver said.

"I'm usually quiet."

"This is a different kind of quiet."

Del picked up her coffee cup. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"The kind where you're thinking about something, and you've decided not to tell me what it is."

"I think about things I don't tell you constantly, Oliver. That's just called having an interior life."

He leaned back in the booth. "I just like to know when the interior life is particularly active."

"It's always particularly active." She took a sip of the coffee that was surprisingly decent. "I'm thinking about George."

“I’m starting to get jealous of him, Del.” Oliver smiled, then his expression settled. "What about him?"

"Just—going over it." She set the cup down. "The way he talked once he stopped pretending. It was like watching someone take off a coat."

Oliver nodded slowly.

"He'd been wearing it so long he'd probably forgotten it was a coat," she said. "And then it was just off. Just like that." She turned the cup in her hands. "I keep thinking about the kids at that shelter. The ones we'll never know about."

Oliver was quiet for a moment. "They're why he had to be stopped."

"I know." Del looked at him. "I'm not arguing with you."

He seemed to absorb that. The fact that she wasn't arguing. She could see it register, the slight ease in his shoulders, the particular quality of relief that he tried not to show and showed anyway.

That was useful information.

The food came. Del ate. Oliver ate. The diner moved around them at its unhurried pace; the trucker at the counter asked for a refill, the woman with the newspaper turned a page, and the man by the window ordered a second coffee.

Oliver excused himself to pay.

He left the bag.

He'd never done that before. Del looked at it sitting there on the seat beside where he'd been, unzipped at the top, the way he sometimes left it when they were moving fast. She could see the edge of the envelope inside. Just the corner. Brown paper, slightly creased.

She looked away.

Two men were sitting at the counter. She'd clocked them when they came in—ten minutes after Oliver and her, which meant nothing. But they'd taken stools at the counter end closest to the back booths, which gave them a sightline to the room. Also nothing. People sat where there were seats.

One of them said something to the other. The second man's eyes moved across the room in an almost casual way. But they landed on the bag. Stayed there for two seconds. Three.

Del kept her face aimed at her coffee.

The first man said something else. She watched the second man's posture change in the small, specific way.

Oliver came back from the register and slid into the booth. He picked up his fork. He hadn't noticed. He was talking about something—the route and how far they could get by nightfall— and Del let him talk, her eyes moving every forty seconds to the two men at the counter.

Third time she looked, they were watching Oliver put the bag back over his shoulder as he reached for his jacket.

She thought about saying something.

She went back and forth on it twice.

The thing was, Oliver would handle it. She knew that about him now. If she told him, he would handle it, and she had learned what his handling looked like. In a gas station lot, with a flat road and no witnesses, and two men who'd made a stupid, small decision about the wrong bag.

"Ready?" Oliver said, standing.

Del picked up her jacket.

"Yeah," she said. "Let's go."

They walked out into the Texas air. Oliver was half a step ahead, talking about the next stretch of highway. He didn't notice the two men following them out until they were already in the lot.

But Del did.

She'd noticed before they left the booth.

She hadn't said anything.

She was still working out what that meant about her.