Cassie came. She spent most of the afternoon organizing tools while Parker watched Derek repair a brake light. Derek answered the man's questions without condescension and made room for him to hold the flashlight. Cassie noticed how different Derek sounded when he was helping somebody who had not challenged his sense of place in the club. He was patient, precise, and surprisingly funny.
At one point Parker struggled to follow a technical explanation and apologized for making Derek repeat himself. Derek shook his head. "That's what teaching looks like," he said. "If you understood it the first time, I'd be out of a job."
Cassie looked down at the tools in her hands so nobody would see her smile. A man could be defensive and generous, angry and careful, capable of causing hurt and capable of giving comfort. She suspected Ms. Ortega would be pleased to hear she was finally finding the messy middle.
When Parker left, Derek wiped his hands on a rag and glanced at Cassie. "Don't put his face in your project."
"I wasn't going to."
He looked at her for a moment. "Good. He's had enough people staring at him."
"You were good with him," she said.
Derek shrugged. "He's trying. You don't punish people for trying."
She wanted to ask why he had been so quick to punish her for doing the same thing. Instead, she said, "That's exactly why I came here."
He frowned, not understanding at first. Then his expression changed, and he looked away. Neither spoke of the exchange again, but afterward Derek stopped calling the project a school report. He still called Cassie professor, only now the word sounded more like an invitation to argue than a warning to leave.
The planning committee continued its work. Maria assigned food. Hank contacted neighboring riders. Tommy reviewed the outreach invitations and insisted nobody be pressured to attend for the sake of good publicity. Derek organized maintenance checks for visiting motorcycles, and Graham worked with the cemetery office to ensure the gathering would be respectful of other families.
Cassie prepared the printed remembrance program. She included space for the names of riders, veterans, spouses, friends, and children who had shaped the club. Maria corrected the spelling of two surnames and the date of Casey's death. Hank checked Jimmy's name, then asked that the program mention not only how he died but how he lived. Derek reviewed the paragraph about Bull and sat silent long enough that Cassie feared she had got it wrong.
"You wrote that he was stubborn," Derek said at last.
"He was. Everybody says so."
"And you wrote that he repaired the clubhouse furnace three winters in a row."
"Maria showed me the invoices. He never charged for labor."
Derek read it again. "He'd have hated all this fuss," he said.
Cassie waited.
"It's right," he added. "Leave it."
The words were more valuable to her than the grade she expected to receive. For the first time, Derek had trusted her to tell something difficult about his father without demanding that she make him perfect.
One evening, Graham found Cassie asleep at the kitchen table with the memorial program open beside her laptop. Her pen rested between two fingers, and she had written the same name three times in the margin while trying to check an uncertain date. He covered her with an old blanket, then sat down across from her rather than waking her immediately.