At seven thirty, a message came from Millie saying she would visit the apartment and begin the paperwork that morning. She also advised Rex to prepare for the possibility that Brian would not be able to stay with him immediately, no matter how willing everyone was. Rex replied that he understood. Then he opened the cabinet beneath his desk, removed a cardboard box of old photographs, and searched for something he had not looked at since James left.
It was a picture taken at a summer barbecue, years before Brian was born. Sarah was perhaps sixteen, sitting on the tailgate of a truck with a plate of food balanced on her knees. James stood nearby, scolding somebody for starting a motorcycle beside the picnic tables, and Rex was laughing in the background with a can of soda raised in one hand. The young woman's expression struck him more than anything else. She was smiling, but her shoulders were tense, and Rex remembered that she had been uncomfortable whenever certain men began drinking heavily.
He set the picture beside Jaime's letter. For years he had told himself that James had become judgmental, that his friend had stopped understanding what brotherhood meant. Looking at Sarah now, he recognized a father who had noticed what others ignored. Rex felt an old shame come up slowly, not dramatic or cleansing, just plain and difficult to avoid.
By eight, Butcher had arrived with a box from the machine shop and a face that suggested the morning had already offended him. "They can salvage the cylinders," he announced. "They've got the measurements and a parts combination we can make work, but it's not the cheap answer." He set the invoice down and studied Rex. "You look like you spent the night arguing with a ghost."
"Maybe I did." Rex tapped the letter. "Jaime wasn't wrong to leave."
Butcher considered this. He had been younger in the years Rex was remembering, but he had seen enough of the club's past to know there was no point romanticizing it. "No," he said at last. "He wasn't. Doesn't mean you can't do something right now."
Rex nodded. The answer did not absolve him, which made it useful. He folded the old photograph into a clean envelope and put it in a drawer where he would remember it. Then he went to the service bay and helped Butcher prepare the next round of work.
Brian arrived later that morning after an appointment with his caseworker. Mrs. Alvarez had brought him, and she stayed long enough to confirm that the next meeting was scheduled for Friday afternoon. Brian carried a small school assignment folded in his notebook, having completed the missed work with help from his teacher. The caseworker had told him that attending school and keeping a normal routine mattered; he thought this was reasonable in principle and nearly impossible in practice.
"I didn't sleep much," he admitted when Butcher asked how he was doing.
"Then you watch more than you work today," Butcher said. "A tired mechanic is an expensive mechanic."
Brian groaned. "You sound like Grandpa."
"That's a compliment in this building."
The newly machined parts were arranged under bright lights, and Butcher showed Brian the measurements without asking him to guess. They discussed what had been repaired, what was still uncertain, and why every part had to be evaluated as part of a larger system. Brian listened closely, asking questions whenever something did not make sense. Butcher was impressed not by how many answers the boy supplied but by how quickly he accepted a better explanation when the evidence contradicted him.