“Socket set.”
“That is insulting.”
“You were suspicious.”
“I was starving.”
“Also suspicious.”
She elbowed him.
He nearly spilled his drink.
Then Sky became quiet.
“You know what I thought?”
“When?”
“The first day.”
Gregory looked at her.
“I thought you were going to throw me out.”
His smile faded.
“Almost did.”
“I know.”
“Terry would’ve.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“You sure?”
“He was the first person who made me hot chocolate.”
Gregory nodded reluctantly.
“Fair.”
Sky looked at the napkin framed inside the office.
“For a long time, I thought Luther sent me here because you were dangerous enough that nobody would mess with me.”
Gregory smiled.
“He may have.”
“But I think there was another reason.”
“What?”
“He knew you’d argue.”
Gregory frowned.
“Explain.”
“He knew you wouldn’t all agree immediately.”
“That sounds bad.”
“No.”
Sky leaned against the bench.
“If everybody had just said yes to everything, I probably would’ve run.”
Gregory stared at her.
She continued.
“Terry worried about the law. Lucy worried about paperwork. Jimmy worried whether I could actually paint. You worried about Hollow.”
“That sounds about right.”
“Martha worried about whether any of you were idiots.”
“She still does.”
Sky smiled.
“That’s why it worked.”
Gregory looked toward the mural again.
“Messy family.”
“Still family.”
Rain hammered the roof.
Outside, the gravel lot turned dark beneath the water.
The crooked sign above the entrance swung slightly in the wind.
IRON JAWS MC
MEMBERS ONLY
Years earlier, a fourteen-year-old girl had stood beneath that sign and entered anyway.
She had carried a backpack, a sketchbook, and a napkin.
She had believed she was asking strangers for work.
What she was really asking was whether a promise made by her dead brother still meant anything.
The answer had not come immediately.
It came through food left beside her.
A blanket.
A paintbrush.
A lawyer.
A courtroom.
A spare bedroom.
School mornings.
Arguments over curfew.
Therapy appointments.
Bad grades.
Better grades.
A first paycheck.
A first motorcycle.
And thousands of ordinary days in which nobody disappeared simply because she made a mistake.
That was how Sky finally understood family.
Not as people who promised never to leave.
She had heard promises before.
Family was people who built enough ordinary evidence that leaving stopped feeling inevitable.
Gregory lifted his mug.
“You locking up?”
Sky nodded.
“In a minute.”
He headed toward the door.
Then stopped.
“Sky.”
“Yeah?”
“Hollow would’ve been proud of you.”
For years, that sentence would have made her cry.
This time she simply smiled.
“I know.”
Gregory nodded.
Then left.
Sky turned off the paint-booth lights.
One row at a time, the garage darkened.
The mural disappeared gradually into shadow.
Luther first.
Then Jimmy.
Terry.
Lucy.
Gregory.
Finally Sky.
She walked toward the entrance, paused beneath the framed napkin, and touched the bottom edge of the glass.
Nine years after Luther died, his old emblem had led a frightened girl through a steel door.
Years after that, the same girl no longer needed it to tell her where she belonged.
She switched off the final light.
Locked the garage.
And went home.