“My father is twenty-three.”
“Hank is there.”
“Hank lifted his head.”
“So is a man named Leon Casey.”
The expression on several older faces changed.
Cassie noticed.
“He was nineteen.”
“He died in 1973.”
Hank’s fingers tightened around his glass.
Cassie closed the notebook.
“What I’m trying to understand is why a bunch of young veterans came home and built this instead of just moving on.”
No one laughed now.
“Because whatever this place became, it gave my father something.”
“When I was little, I thought Sunday rides were just something Dad did because he liked motorcycles.”
“As I got older, I noticed something.”
“If he went too long without riding with you, he got quieter.”
“If he came back from a ride, he seemed…”
She searched for the right word.
“Lighter.”
Graham looked away.
Cassie continued.
“I want to understand what gave me back my father before I was even born.”
That sentence stayed in the room.
Maria looked down.
Hank rubbed his beard.
Even Derek no longer looked amused.
Graham finally spoke.
His voice was rough.
“In seventy-one, I came back from Saigon with more ghosts than memories.”
Cassie looked at him.
Graham rarely said the city’s name.
“I was twenty-three.”
“I thought coming home meant the hard part was over.”
He laughed without humor.
“Turned out home had its own problems.”
Several men nodded.
“People asked questions they didn’t want answers to.”
“Some didn’t ask anything.”
“I’d wake up hearing things that weren’t there.”
“I couldn’t sit in restaurants with my back to the door.”
“I’d drive all night because if the bike was loud enough, sometimes my head wasn’t.”
Hank stepped away from the bar.
Graham pointed toward him.
“Hank found me before there was even much of a club.”
Hank shook his head.
“We found each other.”
“That too.”
Graham looked around.
“Most of us didn’t have words for what was wrong.”
“There wasn’t a group meeting where we sat around discussing mental health.”
A few men smiled faintly.
“We rode.”
“We fixed bikes.”
“We kept track of each other.”
“If somebody stopped showing up, someone went looking.”
“That was about as sophisticated as our treatment plan got.”
Maria said:
“Still works better than nothing.”
Graham nodded.
“Sometimes.”
Derek shifted.
“This still doesn’t mean we open club business to a teenager.”
Graham turned toward him.
“No.”
Cassie’s heart sank slightly.
Then Graham continued.
“It means she gets to ask.”
Derek frowned.
“And because she’s your daughter, we’re supposed to say yes?”
Graham looked at Cassie.
Then back at Derek.
“No.”
“Being my daughter got her through the door without me throwing her out.”
Cassie raised an eyebrow.
“You knew I was coming.”
“I still could have.”
A few people laughed.
Graham’s expression became serious.
“Everything after that is hers.”
He turned to Cassie.
“You want to ride with the Iron Wolves?”
“Yes.”
“You get up when we get up.”
“Yes.”
“You follow instructions.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t publish anything someone tells you off record.”
“I know.”
“You don’t photograph people without asking.”
“I won’t.”
“You don’t turn grief into entertainment.”
Cassie swallowed.
“I won’t.”
“And if somebody tells you a story, you remember they lived it before you wrote it.”
She nodded.
“Yes.”
Hank raised his beer.
“I say we give the kid a shot.”
Maria lifted her coffee cup.
“Second.”