Judge Parwick expanded Darla’s parenting time and scheduled another review sixty days later.
“Progress is not a race,” he said. “Stability demonstrated over time matters more than a dramatic month.”
Darla nodded.
Outside, there were fewer riders waiting this time.
Eight.
Eli liked that.
The first hearing had needed thirty-five people standing in the cold because the moment was enormous and nobody wanted him walking out of the courthouse into uncertainty.
The second required eight because life had begun becoming ordinary.
Ordinary was a victory.
One evening in late February, Eli entered the work bay and found a small black patch sitting on Boon’s bench.
The words were embroidered in silver.
EARNED. NEVER GIVEN.
Eli stopped.
Boon was under a motorcycle on a creeper.
“You left something out.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Eli picked up the patch.
“So it’s mine?”
Boon rolled out far enough to look at him.
“No.”
Eli frowned.
“Then why is it here?”
“Motivation.”
“You’re terrible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“What do I have to do?”
“You’ll know.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Eli put the patch back exactly where it had been.
He noticed Raina standing at the bay entrance.
“He’s working up to it,” she said.
Boon pointed a wrench in her direction without looking.
“Stay out of this.”
Raina walked away smiling where Boon could not see.
By early March, Eli had begun collecting stories about Caleb deliberately.
Not all at once. That would have turned the man into a project, and Eli did not want a project. He wanted pieces.
Doyle told him Caleb hated mushrooms and would detect one chopped into sauce from three rooms away.
Petra told him Caleb once rode sixty miles back in a storm because he realized a waitress at a roadside diner had accidentally returned too much change.
Garrett told him Caleb sang badly and frequently.
Trace told him the missing joint of his finger had absolutely nothing to do with Caleb, then refused to explain further, which Eli suspected meant the opposite.
Raina told him Caleb had argued with her more than anyone else in the club.
“About what?” Eli asked.
“Usually me being right too quickly.”
“What does that mean?”
“He believed people deserved time to arrive at conclusions I had already reached.”
“Was he right?”
Raina looked offended.
“Occasionally.”
Eli thought of the judge warning her about deciding because she believed herself most competent.
“He really knew you.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “He did.”
Darla eventually gave Eli the photograph from the hall closet.
Caleb stood beside an older motorcycle, one hand on the handlebar, half-smiling at something outside the frame. Darla was beside him, younger, hair longer, leaning against his shoulder. The photograph had been taken before Eli was born.