Della's lodge office smelled like woodsmoke and printer toner, and she didn't get up when I came in, just kept sorting a stack of registration forms like I was interrupting a task more important than whatever I'd driven over to say.
"I'm pulling the bus," I said. "And the Steady Mile name off the brochure, the website, the registration forms, all of it. Effective today."
She set the forms down slowly. "You signed a contract, Lenora. I've already advanced you twenty-two hundred for transport. Cancel and we'll have to settle that against the passenger refunds. I'm not paying for your change of heart out of the lodge's room money."
"I'm aware. I'm not asking you to refund me. I'm telling you my company isn't driving anyone out to that service track, and my name isn't going on a route card again, laminated or otherwise."
"So cancel your part. I'll use the lodge van. I've got four customers booked directly for the walk already, besides yours, and I'm not telling them Monday's off because you had a crisis of conscience on a Friday."
"Then we're not doing a joint cancellation," I said. "I came here hoping we could end this together, clean, both of us telling people the same thing. If you won't, I'll tell our list the truth separately, and you can tell yours whatever you want."
She looked at me like I'd threatened her, which, I supposed, in the only language she understood, I had. "You'll scare off bookings that have nothing to do with the walk. Half of those people just want the room and the candlelight dinner."
"Then they'll keep their rooms. I'm only contacting the ones who booked through us for the drive and the walk, because those are the only names on my list, and those are the only people my name has any business reaching."
I drove back to the school with the booking sheet open on the passenger seat. Of the original eleven names, two had already canceled through the lodge; Della would credit those against our advance. Nine active names remained, Grant's handwriting beside each pickup time. I called them one at a time from the counter phone, the same phone that used to ring with parents asking about icy-road lessons.
Most took it well enough once I got past the first sentence. "I'm calling to cancel your reservation with Steady Mile for Monday's excursion and offer a full refund of our transport charge," I'd say. Of the five-hundred-dollar package, two hundred forty was ours; the lodge held the rest for rooms and meals. I explained that division before the reason for canceling, and promised written confirmation rather than another reassuring sentence nobody could check.
One woman, a retired teacher from two towns over, asked if this meant the story about the recent sighting wasn't true. "It means there's an illustration of what a man might look like today, and a stranger's impression of a face in a diner, and nothing connecting either one to that road," I told her. "I won't pretend otherwise so you'll keep your booking."
She thanked me for saying it plainly and asked for her refund anyway, which told me she'd wanted the walk for the mystery, not the certainty, and once the mystery got smaller she had no use for the rest of it.
Two callers pushed back harder, one asking why I was "backing out now" when the brochure had my old job title printed right there under the route, as if that line obligated me to something I'd never agreed to in the first place.
"That's exactly why I'm calling," I said. "That line was never something I signed off on, and I don't want you walking a track at dusk in February believing a retired officer vouched for where it leads."
By six that evening I'd refunded six of the nine, each one a withdrawal from an account that couldn't easily absorb it, and I sat at the counter afterward listening to the heater cycle on and off, aware that I'd just spent money we didn't have to undo a promise I hadn't made but had let stand too long anyway.
Grant came in near closing, saw the open ledger, the list with lines drawn through six names, and didn't say anything for a while. Then: "Della's still doing it. With her own van."
"I know," I said. "That's three people left who still think they're walking out to where Tobin Voss's car was found, led by somebody wearing our company's reputation even though our company just told six people we don't stand behind it. That's not finished, Grant. That's just smaller."