Chapter 14

The insurance cleared on a Tuesday.I reopened Lane's the same day.

New stools, same bolts. New pie case, same recipes. The counter was replaced but I'd kept the old brass rail underneath because some things don't need updating, they just need someone stubborn enough to keep them. Billy Hancock was first through the door, took his usual spot, and ordered coffee like the last three months hadn't happened.

"Place looks good, Lex."

"Getting there."

It was. But there was a gap by the far wall where the jukebox had stood for thirty years, and I still couldn't look at it. I'dwatched Rook load what was left of it into Duke's truck two weeks into the rebuild. The casing caved in, the glass gone, the whole thing listing sideways. I hadn't asked where he was taking it. Scrapped, I assumed. I couldn’t bear to think about it.

It wasn't about wanting a jukebox. I could buy a jukebox. It was about wantingthatone. The one my grandmother chose from a catalogue in 1974 and loaded with every song she loved. You can't replace that. You just learn to look at the empty space.

Rook came in around eight, after a run to Billings. Leaned across the counter and kissed me the way he did now, unhurried, his hand on the back of my neck. It still caught me off guard sometimes. The ease of it. The certainty.

"Got something in the truck for you,” he said.

"If it's another fire extinguisher, we have four."

"It's not a fire extinguisher."

He brought it in with Razor, the two of them carrying something heavy between them, and for three full seconds I didn't understand what I was looking at. The chrome was polished. The glass was new. The casing was whole, the paint touched up to the same cherry red it had been when my grandmother unwrapped it. My jukebox. Fully restored and brought back from what I'd been sure was scrap.

"Restorer in Missoula," Rook said. "The mechanism was solid underneath. It was the housing and the glass and the records that took the damage. The records that smashed, well, I tracked down the same pressings. Took about six weeks to find the Loretta Lynn."

I opened the case. Flipped through the cards. Patsy Cline. Johnny Cash. Loretta Lynn. Tammy Wynette. Every song my grandmother chose, back where they belonged, in the machine she'd chosen them for.

I pressed my hand to my mouth. He came over and stood behind me, his arms around my waist, his chin on my shoulder.

"Play one," he said.

I hit B7. Patsy started singing about falling to pieces and it was as if I could hear my grandmother's voice singing along and filling the room again, the way it had for thirty years.

The highway hummed outside. The coffee was hot. The stools were full.

Lane's was open once again.