Sully began stopping by during Leo's visits, although Rosa made it clear he was not to distract the apprentice from work. Sometimes he brought a rider who needed a motorcycle repaired, and the rider would stare at Leo after learning he was the teenager from the Sinclair station. Some tried to make the story larger than it had been, telling him he had become a legend overnight. Leo grew uncomfortable with that, because the story everyone wanted was about one miraculous repair, while the story he needed to live was about learning how to make the next repair correctly.
"Tell them the truth," Rosa advised when she found him hiding near the parts room after a particularly enthusiastic visitor. "Say you did an emergency repair, that it had limits, and that you're learning the trade now." Leo frowned.
"What if they're disappointed?" Rosa shrugged. "Disappointment isn't fatal. A lie about something that goes eighty miles an hour can be."
The case against Hank continued developing in the background. Nora told Leo that records from Hank's house were being reviewed and that law enforcement outside Higgins's usual command was examining the incident at the station. The allegations against Higgins included failure to follow proper procedures and possible misconduct connected to payments from Hank. Leo's first instinct was to ask when the men would be arrested. Nora reminded him that investigation was not the same as a conviction, and Leo disliked the answer even while understanding why she gave it.
He had begun sleeping better, but certain sounds still took him apart. A truck engine idling near a window could send him to the back of a room before he knew he had moved. Once a customer at the shop raised his voice over an expensive repair estimate, and Leo dropped a box of washers when the argument reminded him of Hank's kitchen. Rosa did not punish him for the spilled parts. She sent the other apprentice to handle the front counter and asked Leo whether he needed a break.
"I'm not scared of him," Leo said, ashamed. "I know," Rosa answered. "Sometimes your body doesn't know the difference between a memory and what's in front of you yet." Leo looked down at the washers scattered across the floor.
"How long does that take to stop?" Rosa considered the question before answering. "Different for everybody. You don't have to solve it before you deserve a place here."
That evening Sully took Leo to a small diner near the shop, a place with clean windows and a waitress who knew every regular customer's name. They sat at a booth and ordered sandwiches, and Leo noticed that Sully paid without making a show of the bill. Outside, the evening traffic hummed past, far removed from the empty desert road where they had met. "You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop," Sully said after a while. Leo stared at his glass. "Maybe because it usually does."
Sully nodded slowly. "I'm not going to tell you everybody in this world is good. You already know that isn't true." He looked at the hands resting on the table, hands still scarred from work and weather.