Evelyn became still.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Is that good?”
Mason wiped his hands.
“You’re asking fewer questions about what Richard would do.”
“And more about what you should do.”
She considered.
“Was he like this with you?”
“Worse.”
“He never stopped interfering.”
“That sounds like him.”
“He once changed a prototype while I slept.”
“What did you do?”
“Changed it back.”
“Did he get angry?”
“He promoted me.”
Evelyn laughed.
Mason smiled.
There were moments when talking about Richard no longer hurt either of them.
That was another form of repair.
On the first anniversary of Richard Vance’s death, Evelyn held no corporate memorial.
Her father hated ceremonial speeches.
Instead she walked through the original workshop with Mason and Dominic.
The old building sat unused behind the modern fabrication center.
Dust covered the floor.
Richard’s first workbench remained against the wall.
Evelyn found initials carved beneath it.
R.V.
D.H.
M.C.
She looked at Mason.
“You vandalized company property.”
“I was twenty-one.”
“Dominic?”
“Thirty-eight and equally irresponsible.”
Dominic objected.
“Your father started it.”
They stood there laughing in an empty building.
Then Evelyn found a metal drawer.
Inside was a bottle of bourbon.
Unopened.
A note taped to it.
FOR WHEN THE GT WINS THE BIG ONE.
R.V.
The date was ten years earlier.
Dominic sat down.
Mason stared.
Evelyn touched the bottle.
“The big one?”
“He meant Le Mans,” Dominic said.
“We never got there.”
“Not yet,” Mason said.
Both looked at him.
He shrugged.
“What?”
Evelyn smiled.
Two years after Mason returned, Vortex entered an international endurance program.
Not because Mason demanded it.
Because the company was ready.
The new car was not called GT8.
Mason opposed linear naming.
Evelyn ignored him.
It became the GT8.
Mason led architecture.
Isaac led competition engineering.
Young engineers handled systems Mason did not pretend to understand better simply because he was older.
That distinction became part of the culture.
Experience mattered.
So did admitting when someone else knew more.
Luna grew from six to eight.
She visited the workshop after school twice a week.
Nobody called her a future engineer.
Mason prohibited it.
“She gets to decide.”
Luna currently wanted to become an astronaut, veterinarian, race engineer, and bakery owner.
Simultaneously.
Dominic considered this reasonable.
She built model cars at Mason’s workbench.
Her first one barely rolled.
Her second moved.
The third outran a model Isaac built for demonstration.
Isaac accused Mason of helping.
Mason denied it.
Luna admitted he had adjusted one axle.
Isaac demanded disqualification.
Luna called him a sore loser.
Vortex Motorsport had changed.
Not dramatically from the outside.
Still glass.
Steel.
Money.
Racing.
Deadlines.
Pressure.
But inside, something became harder to erase.