“I know.”
“You’re irritating.”
“I know.”
She waited.
Isaac looked around the garage.
His father’s tools.
Old radio.
Work light.
Raymond’s truck.
A tractor axle waiting near the bay.
Six years ago, he would have accepted before Eleanor finished speaking.
Maybe.
Or maybe the man he had been then needed titles more than he understood.
Now Harlow was not exile anymore.
It was home.
His father’s garage had held him together when everything professional had collapsed.
Leaving it felt like betrayal.
Staying felt different now too.
Not peace.
Possibly fear disguised as peace.
That bothered him.
“Let me go back to Harlow,” he said.
“You’re already there.”
Isaac looked around and realized Eleanor did not know he had taken the call from Houston after the certification meeting.
“I mean mentally.”
She laughed.
“Fine.”
“I need to finish things.”
“The garage?”
“Yes.”
“Are you closing it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Handing it off?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Isaac paused.
“I’ll let you know.”
Eleanor became quiet.
Six months earlier, he would have said no.
She heard the difference.
“Finish what you need to finish.”
Isaac drove back to Harlow on a Thursday.
Windows down.
Jazz low.
He stopped once outside San Antonio for coffee.
The highway opened.
Cities disappeared.
Fields flattened.
Mesquite and scrub returned.
By late afternoon, he saw the old garage sign.
MERRITT MOTOR & MACHINE.
The paint looked worse than he remembered.
He smiled.
The federal equipment still occupied part of one bay.
The logistics team had not yet collected everything.
Three black Suburbans sat outside.
The sight caused a couple of passing cars to slow.
Isaac unlocked the garage.
The smell hit him.
Oil.
Hot metal.
Old concrete.
Home.
Raymond’s F-150 waited near the side wall.
A new noise had appeared in the rear differential during the weeks Isaac was away.
Raymond had left the keys with a note.
WHEN YOU’RE DONE SAVING THE COUNTRY, PLEASE SAVE THIRD GEAR.
Isaac read it twice.
Then laughed.
He changed clothes.
Put on his coveralls.
Rolled beneath the Ford.
For several minutes, he did nothing.
He simply lay on the concrete and listened to the building settle in the heat.
Air compressor.
Radio.
Wind against the sheet metal.
A truck passing Route 12.
Familiar.
His father had died in that garage.
Not literally.
He collapsed at home.
But his final years lived inside every corner of the place.
Isaac remembered being eleven, holding a flashlight while his father rebuilt a carburetor.
“Keep it steady.”
“I am.”
“You’re lighting my elbow.”
“You move too much.”
His father laughed.
Then said something Isaac forgot until years later.
“People think fixing things is knowing which part to replace.”
“It ain’t.”
“Fixing things is knowing what still deserves to stay.”
Isaac understood the sentence differently now.
His phone vibrated beside him.
Eleanor.
He answered.
“Logistics team arrives tomorrow.”