Ethan asked. "Away from the cameras." Denise, still holding her phone, caught the request and lowered it without being asked a flicker of genuine respect crossing her face. "I'll give you the room," she said. "Story's not going anywhere.
It'll still be here in 10 minutes." Marcus led Ethan to a quiet corner of the garage near the workbench where Marlene had spent the last 2 hours building the case that had just saved everything. Dutch followed, and Reaper did too, though he hung back near the doorway like he wasn't sure if he still belonged in the conversation. Marcus caught his eye and nodded him closer. "You've earned the right to hear this, too," Marcus said.
"Reaper didn't argue. He just walked over and stood beside Dutch arms crossed. But there was nothing hostile in it anymore. Just a man paying attention." "Okay," Marcus said, turning back to Ethan. "Talk to me."
Ethan sat down on an overturned crate, the same one S had collapsed onto hours earlier. When the weight of being wrong had finally caught up to him, he rubbed his hands together, grease still dark under his fingernails, and for a moment, he just looked at them instead of at Marcus. "My dad's had that garage for 19 years," Ethan said finally. "It's a good shop, honest work, but it's never made real money. Not the kind that lets you plan for anything bigger than next month's bills."
He looked up. "There's a reason I know how to fix things other people give up on. It's because we never had the option of just replacing something expensive. You learn to fix what you've got because what you've got is all there is. I understand that, Marcus said quietly.
I don't think you fully do, Ethan said, not unkindly just honest the way he'd been honest all day. I'm not saying that to be rude. I'm saying it because I need you to understand where this idea is actually coming from. He took a breath.
There's a kid two towns over from us. Kid named Marcus. Actually, funny thing, works part-time sweeping floors at the feed store because his family can't afford for him to do much else. That kid can look at a broken irrigation pump and tell you what's wrong with it faster than half the adults in our county. I've watched him do it.
Nobody's ever going to give him a scholarship for that. Nobody writes essays about knowing how machines talk. He's just gonna keep sweeping floors until he's old enough to maybe, if he's lucky, get hired somewhere that pays him just enough to keep sweeping something bigger. Marcus was quiet listening. There's a girl in my graduating class, Ethan continued, who can do wiring diagrams in her head that I have to write down.