in a robbery. Nobody died, but a cashier was threatened, a family spent months afraid, and Jack had served fifteen years for his part in it. He had gone inside convinced he was the victim of bad luck and come out old enough to know that his choices had harmed people who owed him nothing.
“Fifteen years?” Ethan asked quietly.
“Every one of them.”
“How'd you start again?”
Jack's grip tightened on the wheel. “Badly, at first. I got turned down for jobs. I was angry all the time. I'd tell myself every closed door proved nobody would ever let me change, and then I'd use that as an excuse to act like the old version of me.”
He glanced toward Ethan. “Man named Daniel Reyes finally got through my thick skull. Bought me breakfast, showed me how to fix a bike, and refused to let me blame the world for things I still had control over.”
“Is he still around?”
Jack's mouth moved toward a reluctant smile. “Far too much. Folks call him Padre. Rides with a brotherhood of veteran riders, mechanics, firefighters, and assorted old fools. He lives three hundred miles west and thinks a motorcycle is the proper response to every problem a person can have.”
“That sounds kind of nice.”
“Don't encourage him. He hears one nice thing and starts organizing a cookout.”
At the shop, Ethan asked whether Jack's time in prison had made it difficult to trust anybody. Jack said the prison had taught him to measure every room for exits, but the harder lesson had been accepting that being careful wasn't the same thing as never letting anyone close. The answer surprised Ethan. He'd assumed a man Jack's size couldn't be frightened of loneliness. He was beginning to understand that strength sometimes looked like keeping a door open in spite of knowing what could enter through it.
On the ninth day, the subject of Ethan's family finally came up without either of them planning it. Jack had a carburetor spread across the workbench, and Ethan was cleaning individual parts with a brush. The radio was playing an old rock song that reminded him of his mother. He stopped humming when Jack asked where she was now.
“Cemetery off Route Nine,” Ethan said. “She died when I was thirteen.”
Jack laid down his wrench. “I'm sorry.”
“She used to sing when she fixed things. Not real fixing like this. A drawer that stuck or the washing machine that sounded like it had rocks in it. She'd sing until she got frustrated, then she'd laugh at herself.”
Ethan rubbed a small part with the cloth. “I remember her hands more than anything. She could make any place feel like home.”
“And Russell Pike?”
Ethan looked up sharply. He'd told Jack the name only when filling out a form. “What about him?”
“Where's he now?”
“Same house. Probably using my room for something.”
Jack asked one more question, carefully this time. “Did he hit you?”
Ethan continued polishing until the metal shone. “Not often. It wasn't like in movies. Mostly he'd tell me what things cost and remind me I was part of the bill. He'd make me hand over wages. If I lost an hour at work, he said I owed him for the time he had to spend worrying about me.”