"You didn't know Bull."
"No," Cassie said. "I didn't. Tell me about him."
Derek stared at her. He had been waiting for a defense of Tommy, or another polished sentence about healing, and her question seemed to catch him unprepared. He looked down at the helmet in his hands.
"He taught me to ride in an empty church parking lot," he said at last. "Spent six Sundays running beside the bike because I was too scared to go faster than ten miles an hour. When I crashed into a hedge, he made sure I wasn't hurt, fixed the mirror, and took me back the next week. Never laughed at me."
Cassie listened.
"He could be awful with people," Derek continued. "He'd get angry, say things he shouldn't, and then refuse to apologize because he thought apologizing meant losing ground. But if your water heater broke in January, he'd be at your house before you finished explaining. He paid for my trade school without telling me he'd sold a bike to do it."
His voice cracked on the last sentence. He looked away toward the darkening road, embarrassed by what he had revealed. Cassie waited.
"His last year," Derek said, "he was angry all the time. At Tommy. At getting sick. At the club changing around him. I thought if I kept that anger alive, maybe I was keeping him alive, too."
Cassie looked at the helmet. "Maybe he was more than the anger."
Derek turned toward her. It was the first time he had looked at her without first looking at her age. "He was," he said quietly. "That's what I keep forgetting."
From the garage came a metallic clink and Graham's low voice asking for a different wrench. Derek glanced toward the sound, then back at Cassie. "Tommy isn't the villain I need him to be, is he?"
"I don't think so," Cassie said. "But I never met your dad. I don't get to tell you what to feel about any of it."
Derek let out a long breath. "You're tougher than you look, professor."
"So people keep telling me."
He put on his helmet, then paused before fastening it. "When your project's done, I want to read it. The whole thing. Especially what you write about Bull."
"If you agree to tell me more about him."
Derek thought for a second. "All right. But you don't get the version where he's perfect. I don't think he'd believe you if you wrote that."
He started his motorcycle and rode out through the gate, the taillight shrinking down the road. Cassie stood alone in the cooling air for a moment, then returned to the garage. Her father and Tommy were still working. An engine coughed, faltered, and gave a rough, promising turn that made both men lift their heads at once.
"Again," Tommy said.
Graham reached for the switch. This time the Sportster caught and settled into a deep, uneven idle. The two men looked at one another across the tank, and Graham began laughing while tears ran into his beard. Tommy gripped his shoulder. Cassie watched from the doorway, understanding that the machine had not caused the reconciliation and could not complete it, but it had given two old friends a way to start talking with their hands while the words learned how to follow.
That night she wrote only one line in her notebook. Sometimes people begin repairing a friendship by fixing something that isn't the friendship. She stared at the sentence for a long time, then set down her pen. It was enough for that night.