After the car disappeared down the frontage road, he went into the office and asked Lucy to find every record the club had kept from Luther's final year. The old club records lived in a filing cabinet that Gregory called temporary storage even though it had stood in the same corner since the building opened. The drawers smelled of dust, paper, and the faint mildew that came after heavy rain. Lucy knew better than to trust Gregory's memory of which folder held what. She cleared a space on the desk, put on her reading glasses, and began working backward through nine years of insurance documents, workshop invoices, membership rosters, and photographs preserved in envelopes with the dates written by hand.
Luther's name appeared everywhere. He had signed for paint supplies, volunteered to repair motorcycles for a veterans' charity ride, and loaned the garage money when a compressor failed during a winter when the business was barely surviving. But it was the last folder that caught Lucy's attention. It contained copies of letters addressed to a family court office, two appointment receipts from a legal-aid clinic, and a handwritten list of things Luther believed a child should have in a stable home. The list began with a bed, a school close enough to reach reliably, and somebody who stayed when life became inconvenient.
Near the back was a court notice carrying Sky's name. Luther had filed a petition to become her legal caregiver while her mother was unable to provide consistent care, and the court had ordered an assessment. The printed summary described his irregular working hours, his small apartment, and his association with the Iron Jaws as concerns about stability. It did not say he had harmed his sister or that she was afraid of him. The petition had been denied without prejudice pending changes to his living arrangement and additional information about who would care for Sky when he worked.
Lucy read the notice twice. A denial without prejudice was not the permanent judgment people remembered when they spoke about court cases over coffee. It meant there had been deficiencies a petitioner might be able to correct, and Luther had apparently intended to correct them. Folded behind the order she found a lease inquiry for a two-bedroom apartment, a written statement from Terry offering after-school help, and the draft of a request for another hearing. Luther had been preparing to try again when he died.
Gregory sat across from her as she laid the papers out in chronological order. He could read a mechanical diagram without effort, but legal language had always made him impatient. "They said he was unfit because he rode with us," he muttered. "They listed other concerns," Lucy corrected gently. "Some were practical.
Some appear to have been based on assumptions about the patch on his back. We need a lawyer to tell us which parts matter now." Gregory stared at the two-bedroom lease inquiry for a long time. "He was trying to find room for her," he said.