Jimmy sat at the far end of the table, unusually silent. When Gregory asked for his opinion, he studied a stain on the wood before answering. "That kid wasn't asking to be rescued by a legend. She came asking to do something she's good at. If we turn every conversation into a war about saving her, she's going to disappear inside the story again."
He leaned back. "Give her the chance to draw. Give her meals and a safe place to go. Then let people who know the rules help us with the rest."
Jeff, the youngest patched member, raised a hand as though he were still sitting in high school. He had only joined a year earlier and knew Luther through stories rather than memory. "What if someone else is looking for her?" he asked. "The youth worker said she'd been reported missing from the residence.
That means a paper trail and maybe other people involved. We should know what kind of attention is coming before it lands here." Gregory nodded. It was the kind of question nobody wanted to ask and everybody needed answered.
Over the following week, Sky visited the garage each afternoon under a plan worked out with Natalie and the respite family. The work remained supervised and limited to drawing, color studies, and decorating practice panels with safe art materials rather than handling automotive chemicals. Lucy helped arrange a school transport plan so that Sky could continue her classes and meet with a counselor. The girl disliked the rules at first, especially the requirement that an adult sign her in and out, but the difference became clear when she realized the rules were written down, explained in advance, and applied consistently. Nobody took away her notebook when she disagreed.
The respite home belonged to a couple named Denise and Paul Monroe, who had fostered several teenagers before. Their kitchen smelled of bread in the afternoons, and their daughter had left for college the previous year, leaving a room with yellow curtains and a desk under the window. Denise did not ask Sky to call her anything but Denise. She showed her where the towels were, explained when dinner was served, and told her that the door to the bedroom could be closed when she needed privacy. In the evenings Sky sometimes sat at the desk drawing the garage from memory, surprised to discover that she missed a place she had been trying not to trust.