"Would you be willing to tell me what happened?" he asked. Angela met his eyes directly. It was the first time in seven years that he had addressed her with a question that could not be answered by referring to the house schedule. "He worked for your father's shop until it was sold," she said. "After that he repaired cars wherever he could.
He helped at the salvage yard, fixed delivery vans, sometimes went out at night for people who couldn't pay regular shop prices." She glanced at Noah. "We weren't wealthy, but we were all right for a while. Then he got sick."
Victor remembered a conversation with Edward near the end of the old man's life. His father had mentioned that an excellent mechanic was struggling, and Victor had suggested a donation to a local technical school. Edward had shaken his head and said that donating money was not the same as making sure a particular person could get help. Victor had been on his way to a conference call, and he never asked which mechanic Edward meant.
Now he wondered whether Marcus was the man in that conversation, and the thought unsettled him. He did not ask Angela to confirm it. There was enough already to recognize how much he had failed to notice.
"He died when I was six," Noah said. There was no dramatic change in his voice, only the careful steadiness of a boy who had explained the fact too many times to adults. "He used to make me hold the flashlight. I wasn't very good.
Sometimes I pointed it at his shoes instead of the part." Angela laughed once through an unexpected catch in her throat. "You were terrible with that flashlight," she said. "Your father always pretended he couldn't see anything and made you start over."
The mechanics relaxed slightly at the sound of their laughter. Greg turned away to close a tool cabinet, giving the family a measure of privacy. Victor watched Noah reach into his backpack and produce the worn notebook, opening it with the ease of someone handling a favorite book. There were ordinary lessons inside: sketches of fan motors, bearings, pistons, and shafts; pages of calculations; comments about what particular noises might mean. Near the middle was a drawing of the Ferrari, its profile recognizable despite being rendered in quick pencil lines. Beneath it, in Marcus's handwriting, were notes from a service visit years earlier.
"He told me this was the best car he ever worked on," Noah said. "Not because it was expensive. Because every piece mattered, and you couldn't pretend to understand one part without thinking about the others." Victor held out a hand but waited until Noah offered the notebook.
He turned the pages gently, noticing corrections in the margins and the way Marcus explained complicated ideas to himself through simple pictures. At the bottom of one page was a faded remark: Ask Edward why he always talks over the engine when he knows I need to hear it. Victor surprised himself by laughing.