"What I can tell you is that people can be responsible for what they do. Hank doesn't get to decide what you've earned. Neither do I." Leo lifted his eyes. "Then why are you doing all this?"
For once, Sully seemed to have no ready answer. He looked out the window at the light falling over the parked vehicles and said, "Because somebody should have done it earlier. Because you helped me when you had every reason to hide. And because I know what happens when a kid thinks no one will come back."
Leo waited for more, but Sully did not offer a dramatic confession. The silence told Leo that the story behind those words was old and probably painful. Sully's story came in pieces over the following month. He told Leo first about a younger brother who had loved motorcycles and had been better with people than Sully ever expected to be.
The brother had left home at sixteen after a fight with their stepfather, spent months moving from one friend's couch to another, and eventually disappeared into a part of the country where nobody knew his history. Sully had searched for him, sometimes honestly and sometimes in the useless way people search when they are more angry than afraid. They found each other years later, but by then neither of them could recover the time they had lost.
"He's alive?" Leo asked when Sully finished that part. Sully nodded.
"Lives outside Sacramento. We talk every Sunday, whether either of us feels like it or not." Leo turned the silver lighter between his hands. "Then you got him back." Sully looked at him.
"I found him again. That's not exactly the same thing. He still had to decide whether he wanted me in his life."
Leo considered that distinction in silence. He was beginning to notice that Sully's best advice rarely arrived as an order. The big biker might use a frightening voice with strangers, but he became awkward and strangely careful whenever the subject turned to trust. It made Leo wonder how many of his own mistakes Sully had learned from the hard way. It also made him less afraid to admit that the man had frightened him on the day they met.
"I thought you were going to hurt me," Leo said one evening while they waited for Rosa to finish a phone call. Sully looked surprised, then glanced at the patch on his vest. "Probably had reasons." Leo nodded.
"Your knife. Your size. The way you looked when I came out of the garage." Sully lowered his eyes. "I was hurt and angry. That doesn't mean you should've had to guess whether I'd take it out on you."
He did not apologize in a grand speech. He said, "I'm sorry I scared you," and let the sentence stand. Leo felt the old reflex to reassure him, to say that it had been fine and that a man like Sully had a right to be angry. He resisted. "Thank you," he answered instead. Sully nodded as though they had agreed on an important repair and gone over the specifications together.