“Is it out of your system?” Roland asked when he had finished.

“For the time being, yeah. But don’t worry, Roland, it always comes back. Can I ask you something?”

“Is it foolish?”

“I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“Then ask.”

“Those two men who saved Callahan’s bacon in the laundrymat on the East Side—were they who I think they were?”

“Who do you think they were?”

Eddie looked at Jake. “What about you, O son of Elmer? Got any ideas?”

“Sure,” Jake said. “It was Calvin Tower and the other guy from the bookshop, his friend. The one who told me the Samson riddle and the river riddle.” He snapped his fingers once, then twice, then grinned. “Aaron Deepneau.”

“What about the ring Callahan mentioned?” Eddie asked him. “The one with Ex Libris on it? I didn’t see either of them wearing a ring like that.”

“Were you looking?” Jake asked him.

“No, not really. But—”

“And remember that we saw him in 1977,” Jake said. “Those guys saved Pere’s life in 1981. Maybe someone gave Mr. Tower the ring during the four years between. As a present. Or maybe he bought it himself.”

“You’re just guessing,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” Jake agreed. “But Tower owns a bookshop, so him having a ring with Ex Libris on it fits. Can you tell me it doesn’t feel right?”

“No. I’d have to put it in the ninetieth percentile, at least. But how could they know that Callahan…” Eddie trailed off, considered, then shook his head decisively. “Nah, I’m not even gonna get into it tonight. Next thing we’ll be discussing the Kennedy assassination, and I’m tired.”

“We’re all tired,” Roland said, “and we have much to do in the days ahead. Yet the Pere’s story has left me in a strangely disturbed frame of mind. I can’t tell if it answers more questions than it raises, or if it’s the other way around.”

None of them responded to this.

“We are ka-tet, and now we sit together an-tet,” Roland said. “In council. Late as it is, is there anything else we need to discuss before we part from one another? If so, you must say.” When there was no response, Roland pushed back his chair. “All right, then I wish you all—”

“Wait.”

It was Susannah. It had been so long since she’d spoken that they had nearly forgotten her. And she spoke in a small voice not much like her usual one. Certainly it didn’t seem to belong to the woman who had told Eben Took that if he called her brownie again, she’d pull the tongue out of his head and wipe his ass with it.

“There might be something.”

That same small voice.

“Something else.”

And smaller still.

“I—”

She looked at them, each in turn, and when she came to the gunslinger he saw sorrow in those eyes, and reproach, and weariness. He saw no anger. If she’d been angry, he thought later, I might not have felt quite so ashamed.