The hardest question was the simplest. "Ms. Deacon, if your father truly believed he had been misled, why didn't he go straight to the police?"
Willa looked at the lawyer across the table. She could feel the old temptation to explain everything at once, the disease, the appointments, the medication, the long nights when Grant could barely sit up. Instead she let herself breathe and answered only what she knew. "He was dying," she said.
"I know he sought independent advice and made the declaration you have. I can't tell you every choice he made or didn't make. He's not here to answer. That's why I brought the records he left."
Callum did not congratulate her afterward as though she had passed an examination. He asked whether she wanted a break before discussing what the testimony meant. She said she did, and they walked to a small cafe near the office where she ordered tea and sat looking through the window at pedestrians making their way across the salt-streaked pavement. She had expected to feel vindicated after telling the truth. Instead she felt exhausted by how much of her father's final months had become something strangers were entitled to question.
"I didn't like having to explain him to people who never met him," she said.
"I know," Callum replied. "But you did something important today. You stayed with what you could establish. That's how people make difficult records useful."
On the drive back, Reese did not ask how the interview had gone until they had passed the last traffic lights outside Sudbury. Willa told him only that she had answered the questions and that it had been harder than repairing a seized engine. He said that seemed reasonable. Then he turned on the radio, and for most of the drive they listened to an old country station that faded into static whenever the road dipped between hills.
The weather had begun to change by early March. Snow remained in shaded places, but water ran along the edges of the road in thin streams, and the daylight lingered long enough for customers to arrive after work. Willa found herself looking forward to the sound of motorcycles starting after winter storage, each one a small return to something people loved. She was becoming better at the complicated job of living through an uncertain outcome without allowing it to occupy every minute.
At Northern Shields, a new customer came in with a vintage motorcycle that had been stored badly for years. The owner had inherited it from an uncle and was embarrassed by the condition of the machine. He kept apologizing for the rust, the cracked seat, and the amount of work it would require. Willa walked around it with him, pointing out the frame, the serviceable parts, and the areas where the restoration would be expensive enough to require careful decisions.
"You think it's worth saving?" he asked.