David Sanders, Chloe's father, had been a mechanic whose hands always carried faint crescents of grease around the nails. Her strongest memories of him were not of holidays or birthdays but of the open door of his little repair bay, the radio playing too quietly to make out the words, and the patient way he explained why machinery needed to be listened to before it was touched. He had let her sit on a stool beside him and sort washers into coffee cans. If something went wrong, he never shouted at a stubborn bolt or a frightened apprentice. He would breathe once, look again, and tell Chloe that panic was just another way to lose time.
He died when she was still a child, leaving behind a few tools, an old photograph of himself on a motorcycle, and sentences she could remember more clearly than the sound of his voice. One of those sentences had stayed with her through every year in Richard's house: a machine could be damaged without being worthless. It depended on whether somebody was willing to understand it. Chloe had once believed he was talking only about engines. Much later, she would wonder whether he had meant people too.
Richard took an active dislike to everything associated with David. He sold the larger tools, threw away several drawers of spare parts, and laughed at Chloe when she tried to keep the repair manuals. The only tool she managed to save was an old combination wrench, its handle darkened by years of use and its edges worn smooth. It was small enough to hide inside the lining of her backpack. She kept it because sometimes touching something her father had used was the nearest thing she had to being held by someone who was not trying to hurt her.
The latest beating had happened two nights before. Richard came home angry about an argument at work, found an envelope containing a utility bill he had forgotten to pay, and demanded to know why Chloe had not reminded him. When she told him she had, he accused her of calling him a liar. She remembered the kitchen chair striking the floor, the shock of hitting the cupboard, and then the humiliating necessity of apologizing for an accusation she had not made. By morning, breathing deeply hurt, and dark bruises had begun to spread along her ribs.
She had spent the following day in her room while Richard told a neighbor over the telephone that Chloe was ungrateful and unstable. He said she had fallen while carrying laundry. The lie came as easily as a weather report. That evening, when he locked her in again, she heard him speaking to another deputy about something missing from an old evidence locker and the need to keep a certain mechanic quiet. She did not understand the conversation, but the fear she heard beneath Richard's anger disturbed her more than the words themselves.