Jimmy studied the unfinished rider, then sat on the stool beside the wall. "You don't have to solve that in one afternoon," he said. "It's a mural, not a confession." Sky laughed unexpectedly at that. She had spent years assuming the pictures in her head were the only truthful records of what had happened to her. Jimmy was giving her permission to let one picture remain unfinished until she had something worth adding.
One evening Gregory found her alone in front of the mural after the other painters had washed their brushes. The space heater made a gentle ticking sound, and the garage's daytime noise had settled into the distant hum of traffic. "He was a good man," Gregory said, looking at Luther. "He was loyal, and sometimes he was reckless. He could turn a small argument into an all-night debate.
I miss the way he laughed when he knew he was wrong and didn't want to admit it." Sky studied the painted face. "I used to think he could fix everything," she said. "Then he died, and I found out he couldn't."
Gregory did not rush to contradict her. "He couldn't," he said. "Neither can I." She turned toward him, surprised. "But he did try to get you somewhere safe.
We found the paperwork. That's not the same as being there when you needed him, and I won't pretend it is. But I think he was trying to build something that would last beyond him, even if he didn't know how." Sky put her hand against the wall beside the unfinished rider and whispered, "I needed him anyway."
They stood quietly for a while. Gregory could have said that the club was her family now, and in his heart he already believed it. But he was beginning to learn how heavy such declarations could feel to a child who had watched adults make them and walk away. "You get to be angry at him," he said instead.
"You can miss him and still be angry that he isn't here. Both things can be true." Sky pressed her lips together until they stopped trembling, then reached for her brush and added a line to the smaller motorcycle.
The following Tuesday Michael Ventry's involvement became more difficult to dismiss. Martha received a copy of a complaint sent to the child welfare agency by an attorney acting for a private client. The letter alleged that the Iron Jaws were using Sky's situation to generate publicity, that the garage was unsuitable for a minor, and that her connection to a deceased member had been exaggerated. It attached old photographs of club members at a bar fight long before Sky was born, with no explanation of the dates or whether any person pictured remained involved with the business.