Straightening his leg, Cyrus dug the key ring out of his pocket. Antigone grew quiet. Horace, perched on his broad leather seat with his back to the driver, adjusted his glasses.
Cyrus slid his finger through the center ring and let the weight dangle from his hand.
“If these are what they want, who do I give them to?” he asked. “The guy called Maxi? Do you know how to find him?”
Antigone looked at Horace. The little lawyer pursed his lips. The driver’s eyes flitted up in the rearview mirror.
“Well?” Antigone said.
Horace cleared his throat. “No, thank God. I do not.”
Antigone turned to her brother. Cyrus was expecting anger in his sister’s eyes, but he didn’t find it. Her eyes were like he remembered his mother’s being whenever he’d gotten hurt — which had been often. She wasn’t angry. She was in pain.
Blinking, Cyrus looked at the keys in his hand. “I’m sorry, Tigs. I didn’t know. I couldn’t.”
“I know.” Antigone tucked back her hair and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I would have kept them, too, Cy. You know I would have.”
Horace slid forward, onto the edge of his seat. Reaching out, he set one hand on Cyrus’s knee, and one hand on Antigone’s. “I am going to say something that may initially be perceived as wildly insensitive.” He coughed politely. “There are worse things in this world than your current circumstances. And an entire flock of those worse things — I do profoundly believe this to be the truth — would now be under way if the gentleman called Maxi was now in possession of what you, Mr. Cyrus, have been given. Worse for you, worse for all of us.” He sat up. “Ah, breakfast. And well earned, too.”
The car swung off the road, bouncing to a stop. Cyrus opened the heavy door and stepped out into a gravel parking lot and the sticky morning heat.
Antigone followed him, slamming the door behind her. Horace was already hurrying toward a low green- and-yellow building lined with murky windows. Behind it, tangles of brush were swallowing barbed-wire fencing, where a single cow was rubbing its shoulder against a sighing fence post. On top of the building, a large, flaking plywood sign spelled out PATS’ in hand-painted letters.
Antigone kicked a rock and watched it bounce away. “I couldn’t eat anything right now. Especially not here. Do you think they have a phone?”
“Who knows,” said Cyrus. The two of them moved toward the door. “Do you think it’s owned by someone named Pats? Or is there more than one Pat?”
Horace had stopped at the door. Pulling it open, he stepped to the side and smiled. “Mr. Cyrus, I wouldn’t have thought that you would be one to notice — or care about — an apostrophe.”
Cyrus glared at him.
“Right. Well, there are two Pats,” Horace said. “And this place belongs to both of them.”
Inside, Horace hustled all the way down to the far end of the long, dim dining room and squeezed into a corner booth.
Antigone looked around, irritated. “This place is a hole. Do you see a phone, Cy?”
Cyrus shook his head.
An enormous woman rocked toward them between two rows of yellow booths. “I don’t know about ‘hole,’ honey.” She winked. “Some people call it heaven.” Turning to Cyrus, she pointed to the far end. “Go ahead and join your little friend in the corner. I’ll be right back. Menus on the table.” She nodded at Antigone. “Little lady can follow me if she needs a phone.”
The woman made her way around a small counter lined with stools, and then back toward the sizzling grill. Antigone hurried after her.
Cyrus inhaled long and hard. The dining room was full of the sounds and smells of bacon frying and diced potatoes hopping in the grease. Only a few booths held customers, and they were all men, each of them alone with their newspapers and toothpicks and trucker hats and coffee cups and grease-stained knuckles. The photo of Dan had wiped away Cyrus’s hunger, but the power of the smells brought it roaring back. His mouth was watering and his stomach was ringing hollow bells. Cyrus’s body needed to eat, and that angered him. Dan was gone. Taken. He shouldn’t eat. He shouldn’t smell. He should be gone, too.
In his daze, Cyrus nodded at the other customers as he passed, but their return nods were better, more practiced, exchanging respect with only the slightest lift of the head and a glance from unblinking eyes.
Cyrus slid into the corner booth beneath a low-hanging lamp with a dead bulb. The key ring dug into one leg; the lightning bug glass dug into the other. His neck burned, and his wrist itched. From across the table, John Horace Lawney leaned forward, tenting his fingers. “What will you have?”
“Anything,” Cyrus muttered. He grimaced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, trying to adjust the contents of his pockets. “Dirt. I don’t care.”
The large woman was lumbering toward them with what looked like a pint of carrot juice. Horace flashed her a wide smile. She smiled back. According to the plastic rectangle on her shirt, her name was Pat.
“You dolls ready?” she asked. “What can I get ya? I can tell you right now that you’ve never had waffles as mean as what we sling. You’ll be full till Christmas.”
Cyrus’s stomach seethed, and he groaned. He made himself look up. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that waffles …”
Pat shrugged. “Don’t you worry about it. You’re not a waffle kid. Well, you can’t go wrong on this menu, no matter where you settle. And wherever you settle, it’s gonna be on the house. This breakfast is on Pat and Pat. It’s gotta be hard, your place burning down.” She hesitated. “You are the Archer kids, aren’t you?”
Cyrus looked at his sooty hands and then back up at the big woman. “Yeah. No water at the motel right now. No showers.”
She patted Cyrus on the shoulder. “Well, you kids ever need to eat, tell Dan to bring you on by.”
Cyrus nodded.
Horace rose to his feet. “Madam,” he said. “Pat, we are ready to order.” He handed her the menus. “Do you squeeze your own orange juice?”
“I stomp the oranges myself.”
“Where are the oranges grown?”
“You know,” Pat said. “I couldn’t say. But they’re orange, they’re sweet, and they come with peels.”
“Right.” Horace rubbed his hands together thoughtfully. “We’ll have a large pitcher of fresh-squeezed, a pot of coffee, two plates of links, one of patties, half a pound of bacon, eight eggs scrambled with your sharpest cheddar, diced ham, tomatoes, mushrooms, chopped — fresh, not frozen — spinach, black pepper, and a pinch of cayenne. Four fried eggs, not too runny, and half a loaf of wheat toast. And hashed browns. A pile of them. Oh, and with gratitude for your offer, I will be picking up the tab nonetheless.”
He sat down, raised his eyebrows, and looked at Cyrus. “Will that do?” he asked.
Cyrus blinked. “I thought we were in a hurry.”
“Oh, we were. We are. In part so that we could have time for this.” Horace smiled. “Always breakfast like a man condemned. One never knows what a day may bring.” He nodded at the waitress.
“Okay then,” she said, tucking the menus under one arm while she scribbled notes on a tiny pad. “We are hungry, aren’t we? Big Pat will be happy. He never likes an empty grill.” Dropping the pad into her apron pocket, she turned and moseyed slowly away, the floor creaking beneath her.
Horace sipped his carrot juice, leaned back, and rubbed his jaw. Fine black-and-white stubble rasped against his palm.
Cyrus stared at him. “Tell me how to get Dan back.”
Horace pursed his lips. “That’s a difficult question.”
“I have lots of questions,” Cyrus said. “Not that you’ll have any answers.” He leaned forward. “What’s so special about the keys? Who was Skelton? How do you know he was our godfather, and what exactly did he leave us besides a lot of trouble?”
Horace sighed. “Should we wait for your sister?”
“No,” said Cyrus. “Start with the keys. What’s the deal? They turn things on, don’t they? Our sign never worked, not until Skelton touched it. And I had a broken record player, too. That’s it, right? The keys turn things on.” He looked at the dead lamp above him. Glancing at Horace, he reached up and wriggled the bulb. Nothing. He
