EPISODE 8 — Breakfast
They ate in silence for a while. Not awkward silence — the other kind. The kind that comes after something true.
Tank ate like a man who hadn’t tasted food in years. Halfway through his pancakes he stopped, fork in midair, and looked at Cole.
“How’d you know?” he asked. “About… the dog. About Miller’s Curve.”
Cole sipped his coffee. “I didn’t. Not the details. But guilt has a smell, son. I wore it myself for a long time.”
“What was yours?”
Cole was quiet for a moment. Rex’s head came up, rested on Cole’s knee.
“Desert. Ten years back.” Cole’s voice went flat, the way it did when he was somewhere else. “My unit took fire. My dog — not Rex, the one before, a shepherd named Duke — he found the shooter before I could. Saved four of us.” A pause. “Didn’t save himself.”
Tank set down his fork.
“I told myself for two years that if I’d been faster, if I’d seen it sooner—” Cole shook his head. “Guilt’s a liar, son. It tells you control you never had. The only thing you can control is what you do Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?”
“Today’s Tuesday.” Cole nodded at the booth, the diner, the dog. “You showed up. That’s the whole trick. Just keep showing up.”
Tank looked at Rex — gray-muzzled, one ear torn, the bravest animal he’d ever met — and something settled in his chest for the first time in twenty years.
“Can I…” Tank hesitated. “Can I come back next Tuesday?”
Cole smiled. “Rex gets the bacon. You get whatever Denise feels like giving you.”
“Which had better include pie,” Denise said, refilling their coffees with hands that had finally stopped shaking.
