The tool board filled gradually. A replacement torque wrench appeared in January. A diagnostic tool arrived in March. In May I bought back an old set of specialty sockets from the pawn shop that had held them since the winter after Hector died. The owner recognized me and asked whether things had improved.
"Enough," I said. "Not everything. Enough."
I carried the sockets home wrapped in brown paper and hung them beneath their outlines. Their weight felt almost ceremonial in my hands. They were only tools, but I remembered selling them and wondering whether I was dismantling my uncle's life one piece at a time. Bringing them back didn't undo his death. It helped me believe that what he'd built could grow without him.
Grip still visited. Sometimes he arrived on the Knucklehead, sometimes in a pickup if he had parts to deliver or simply wanted coffee. He no longer walked into my shop as though he owned the room. He waited when I was with another customer and asked if I had time before launching into a story. A man who had once frightened me with a sentence learned to respect the space around my work, and I learned that a first impression, however powerful, didn't have to be the whole truth about him.
One Saturday he brought a young rider whose machine had been making an odd noise for weeks. The young man spoke quickly, listing everything he'd already replaced. He seemed embarrassed when he said he couldn't afford another failed repair.
I let him finish before asking what happened when the sound first appeared. Grip stood quietly by the counter. When I turned toward him, he looked almost amused.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Just listening to you sound like Hector."
The words caught me so unexpectedly that I looked down at the work order. For years I had wanted to become the kind of mechanic my uncle was. I had imagined achieving it through one spectacular repair or a reputation that made strangers come from another county. Now I understood it happened in smaller moments, when I asked the next honest question instead of pretending to know the answer.
On the anniversary of Hector's death, my mother and I went to the cemetery early. It was a mild morning, the kind of weather he would have called perfect for working with the bay doors open. We brought fresh flowers, stood beside the stone, and told him about the shop as though he'd only been away a little longer than usual.
My mother described the new roof and the loan payments. I told him about Mateo, the repaired tool board, and the plaque with his name. Then I stopped talking because everything I had to say suddenly seemed too small to contain what I felt. My mother placed a hand on my back and waited with me.
"He knew you could do it," she said after a while.
"I didn't."
"You weren't supposed to know everything at nineteen. You were supposed to keep learning."