spent the better part of a decade avoiding the emblem out of respect. Looking at the child in front of him, he could not decide whether he was seeing a genuine connection or a well-practiced imitation. "You said you could paint," he told her. "Did he teach you that when you were five, too?"
Sky swallowed, but she did not look away. "He taught me how to hold a brush, and he told me to watch the dark parts of a picture first. After he died, I kept practicing." She touched the top of the backpack as if the explanation lived somewhere inside it. "I have notebooks.
Drawings he left. Some photographs. I practiced until I could do the lines without looking." Jimmy glanced at Gregory, who gave the smallest possible nod. The shop painter reached up to a shelf and brought down a stripped practice tank that had been waiting for a design.
"This isn't a contest," Jimmy said, though every man there could hear that he was setting one. "I'm not letting you near anybody's paid job just because you know a name. But if you want to show me what you can do, there's a practice piece and some water-based demonstration paint over by the clean bench." He slid it toward the window, away from solvents and the spray booth, and laid out soft brushes he had washed that morning. "No rush. If you don't know something, say so."
Sky seemed almost relieved by the condition. She pulled her hair tighter, washed her hands in the utility sink, and placed her backpack on the floor where she could keep it in sight. On the bare tank she drew one pale guiding curve, then another, so lightly that even Jimmy had to lean close to see them. She did not attempt the famous emblem. Instead she began a design of a road bending beneath a desert sunrise, with shadowed mountains falling away on either side. She worked cautiously at first, then found a rhythm as familiar as breathing.
The crew went back to their tasks, or pretended to. A wrench clicked without turning, the same drawer opened three times, and Jimmy found himself standing beside the clean bench with a rag he did not need. Sky built the picture in layers, leaving empty spaces where the light was supposed to do its work. Every few strokes she stopped and studied the shape from a distance. Jimmy recognized that habit immediately, and it carried him back to nights when Luther had worked with the same patient intensity, taking five steps backward to discover what he could not see from five inches away.