The public inquiry into the foster agency produced changes, though not all of them satisfied the families involved. Earlier complaints were reopened, staff training was revised, and the department arranged independent reviews of cases involving similar warnings. There were findings of failures to follow up, and several employees left their positions. Leo understood that a policy could be written in an afternoon and ignored for years. He wanted proof that the children who came afterward would have someplace to turn before they ended up on the side of a highway.
With Talia's help, he began speaking privately to small groups of foster youth and vocational counselors. He did not tell them that courage fixed everything or that every frightening situation would end with hundreds of motorcycles cresting a hill. He told them to ask for independent help, keep whatever records they could, and remember that being treated badly did not mean they were difficult or worthless. He also told them that asking for help could feel dangerous when adults had punished them for it before. Several children nodded in a way that made him recognize his own younger self.
One afternoon a boy of about fifteen waited until the others had left and approached him. "Are you really the mechanic from the desert?" the boy asked. Leo smiled. "That's what they call me sometimes."
The boy looked down at his shoes. "I'm not good at anything like that." Leo considered him for a moment and said, "You don't have to know what you're good at yet. But you deserve the chance to find out."
The boy nodded and left without another word. Leo watched him go, remembering how Sully had put a nutrition bar on the workbench without turning it into a test. He realized that the best thing he had received from the biker was not permission to become someone important. It was the ordinary recognition that he had value before proving anything at all. That thought changed the way he spoke to every apprentice who came through Rosa's shop afterward.
The first customer who asked for Leo by name arrived on a cloudy Monday morning in early spring. He was a retired truck driver named Frank Heller who had been restoring a motorcycle he bought with his first real paycheck more than forty years earlier. The machine had passed through two shops and returned with new paint but the same troubling vibration that had made Frank stop riding it. He stood in Rosa's office with his helmet under one arm and asked whether the young mechanic everybody talked about was available.
Leo heard the request through the doorway and almost turned around to see whom Frank meant. Rosa caught the expression on his face and smiled without letting the customer notice. "Leo's here," she said. "He'll listen to what's happening and give you an honest assessment." Frank looked doubtful when a young man in clean work clothes approached him. "You're the one Sully keeps talking about?" he asked.
"Depends what Sully told you," Leo replied. Frank snorted. "Said you know when to stop pretending an engine is fine." Leo nodded.
"That's fair." He asked Frank when the vibration occurred and what the previous shops had already tried. The conversation lasted longer than the inspection itself, because Leo wanted to understand the history before reaching for a tool.