Willa read each update and filed it in a new folder. She had spent months gathering proof that a set of documents was wrong; now she was learning the equally unglamorous work of making new documents right. Callum explained outstanding debts, insurance, employee obligations, and contracts that could not simply be erased because ownership was corrected. He showed her how to read the balance sheet that had once intimidated her and how to ask what a line represented before agreeing that it belonged there. She was not going to repeat her father's mistake of leaving every piece of paperwork to somebody who sounded confident.
One evening she called the shop's senior mechanic in West Haven, a woman named Nina Alvarez who had worked beside Grant for more than a decade. Nina had stayed after the transfer because she needed the job and because the younger mechanics depended on her to keep the place from falling apart. The call was awkward at first. Nina had not known whether Willa would blame her for staying, and Willa had not known whether Nina would see the lawsuit as an attack on everybody still earning a living there.
"I should've called you after your dad died," Nina said. "I kept thinking you needed space, and then there was so much talk about lawyers that I didn't know what to say."
"You had a shop to keep open," Willa replied. "And people who needed their paychecks. Dad would've wanted that."
Nina was quiet a moment. "He talked about you all the time. He said you could hear a problem in an engine before the rest of us could see it."
Willa laughed softly. "He said that about whoever was standing closest when a customer asked him about the shop."
"He didn't say it like that about everybody." Nina's voice warmed. "Listen, when you come down here, I want you to see what we've done to keep the bays working. We didn't know what would happen, but we tried to keep it a place he'd recognize."
They talked for another half hour about people Willa had known since childhood, equipment that needed replacement, and the customer with the old green pickup who always brought apples in September. It was the first time West Haven had sounded like a real place she might be able to visit again rather than a memory guarded by somebody who had hurt her. When the call ended, she sat at her kitchen table with the phone in her hand and realized she was no longer afraid that hearing the old shop's name would undo her.
The following week Fig found Willa in the back room studying the printed requirements for a mechanic certification program. She had spread the forms beside her shift paperwork and was comparing course dates with the garage's service schedule. Fig leaned against the doorframe without speaking until she looked up. He had been watching her work for months, and there was a question he had decided to ask only once.
"You going to get that certification sorted?"