Pause.
“They found a photograph of you and Richard.”
“Which one?”
“Victory lane.”
“Emily’s in that.”
“Yes.”
Mason became quiet.
“I don’t want it used.”
“Then it won’t be supplied by us.”
“We can’t control public archives.”
“I know.”
“Do what you can.”
“I will.”
He hung up.
That evening he opened the box beneath his bed.
Luna was doing homework beside him.
“What’s that?”
“Old pictures.”
She came closer.
Mason found the victory-lane photograph.
Emily.
Twenty-two.
Smiling.
Luna in her arms, tiny hearing protectors covering half her head.
Luna stared.
“That’s Mom.”
“Yes.”
“And me?”
“Yes.”
“I was at a race?”
“Several.”
“Did I like them?”
“You slept through most.”
She looked at young Mason.
“You look weird.”
“I was younger.”
“You had bad hair.”
“That was fashionable.”
“No.”
He laughed.
Luna touched Emily’s image.
“Would Mom be happy you work there again?”
Mason’s throat tightened.
“I don’t know.”
“You always say don’t pretend to know stuff.”
“Yes.”
“So don’t.”
He nodded.
“You’re right.”
Luna thought.
“I think she would.”
“That’s pretending.”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“But I’m six.”
Apparently that excused everything.
Mason placed the photograph on the bookshelf.
Not back in the box.
One picture.
That was enough.
Months passed.
The GT7 completed the season without another fuel-pressure incident.
Vortex won two races.
Finished on the podium four more times.
The company did not suddenly dominate motorsport.
Mason would have distrusted that kind of story.
Engineering was not magic.
Neither was a person.
The GT7 suffered brake wear in one race.
A gearbox sensor failed in another.
Weather ruined strategy in a third.
They lost.
They learned.
They revised.
They returned.
That mattered more.
Evelyn and Mason developed an unusual working relationship.
She asked direct questions.
He gave inconvenient answers.
The board sometimes found him irritating.
Evelyn considered that useful.
One morning she found him beneath a test chassis at 6:30.
“You have an office.”
“I know.”
“It has a chair.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“A desk.”
“Very impressive.”
“Why are you under a car?”
“Because the car isn’t in my office.”
She sighed.
“My father would have liked that answer.”
Mason slid out.
“You say that less now.”
“What?”
“‘My father would have.’”