"Of course you have," Mara replied. "Good. Bring it tomorrow. We'll find out whether the numbers tell the same story as your imagination."
The next months were full of spreadsheets, business classes at a community college, and small experiments in how to price restoration work without underpaying himself. Leo learned that working for free could make him feel generous while leaving him unable to pay the next month's rent. He also learned to say that a project was beyond his current capacity, a sentence that would once have felt like proof he was worthless. Mara celebrated the first time he turned down a job responsibly.
The old Sinclair station remained in his thoughts. He had not returned since the afternoon when the ambulance carried him away, and part of him was afraid that seeing it again would undo the progress he had made. But he also wondered whether the place had changed, whether somebody had demolished it or finally opened a business where the ruined signs had once stood. He kept an old map in the shop drawer and sometimes traced the road toward it with his finger.
When Leo was twenty-two, he drove back to the station with Sully and Mara. They went in a pickup rather than on motorcycles because Mara insisted that if they were going to inspect a derelict property, they should at least carry water and a first-aid kit. The road was familiar in ways Leo had not expected. Every bend brought back a fragment of the journey: the heat, the hunger, the sound of Sully's damaged engine echoing between broken walls.
The station itself had changed little. The roof over the office had collapsed farther, the broken Sinclair sign hung at an angle, and the scrap yard had been partially cleared by whoever owned the land. The concrete apron still bore stains that the desert had not entirely erased. Leo stood at the edge of the old garage for several minutes before moving closer.
"You okay?" Sully asked.
Leo nodded, then shook his head. "Both," he said. "I think I'm both."
Mara stayed beside the truck, giving him room to approach at his own pace. He walked into the old service bay and saw the empty place where the workbench had stood. For one disorienting moment he could picture the seventeen-year-old version of himself crouched beside the Road King, afraid of the stranger's knife and more afraid of being sent away. Then the image faded, and he saw only a ruined building in need of repairs it might never receive.
"I thought I saved your life that night," Leo said to Sully when the biker joined him. "That's what I told myself afterward. I helped you get off the road. I gave you a chance."
"You did," Sully replied.