The dark man in overalls remembers Thomas and Ruth, then only Ruth and her boy. He says, “He hasn’t lived there in, oh, maybe twenty or more years.” Since before the war.

Lin looks at him and blinks back the tears. For some reason, she hadn’t considered this, that her father would be gone.

A woman in the building stares at her, then steps forward, a kindly woman, a mop in her hand. She sends Lin next door to the gas station. “Really, they’d know more about it there, sweetie. They know him. Don’t worry. It’s a small place. Someone will know how to find him.” She watches Lin leave. “Don’t you think she’s the spittin’ image of him? Her nose, her forehead?”

The gas station smells of tires and oil and smoke. One of the men is pulling the slot of a candy machine. Almond Joy. Lin asks if they know where Thomas Just lives. She gives him the address.

He takes a long look at her. “That was a long time ago.” He yells over his shoulder, “Hey, anyone seen Thomas?”

“A real long time ago.”

There’s a rumor Thomas is at Witka’s, but no one’s gone out there because they stay away from the places where the old ones lived. They think they are still inhabited by ghosts. Some even hear them, and of course that is true, but what they really fear is being seen. As if the spirits of old bent men or women will walk out the door, come out and look at them, deep in the eyes, and see what they have become, what they have done. Or they will slip into them and take them between worlds or down beneath the layers of earth to an older time where untouched objects of bone are dwelling; hooks, fish skin smoothers, needles. It’s the same reason they don’t go over to the once-white houses place. But no one has seen any lights on at Witka’s dark gray house. “He could be at his father’s, but they dislike each other, so I don’t think so. Besides, old senior likes to be alone, to work.” He laughs. “And they plain old don’t get along.”

She stores the information in her mind like paper in a file. On a piece of dirty paper, a man with short fingers makes her a dirt-stained map. It is to Aurora’s. “Here, this woman and her girl know where everyone is.”

“Thank you,” Lin says, grateful, but she feels like crying. She is exhausted and it is getting late. “Is there a place to sleep near here?” she asks. He points her toward the town motel. “It is the only one, the Midtown. You can’t miss it. You’ll just wish you did.” He laughs at the same old joke.

When she leaves, the men look at each other. One says, “Hot.”

“Why do you think she’s looking for him?”

“Who cares? She can find me anytime.” Dwight shakes his hand and blows on it like it’s on fire. “It puts me in a good mood just to look at her. Hey, are my tires ready yet? I’ve been here all afternoon.”