Some days, " Clare said. Other days you'll be filing paperwork, sourcing parts, talking to veterans, cleaning this floor, and whatever else needs doing. She handed him a broom. Today, this floor needs doing. He looked at the broom.
I'm not Brandon, she said. He stopped. I know you don't want to be here, she said. I'm not asking you to want to be here. I'm asking you to be here.
Those are different things. She held the broom out another inch. The floor needs sweeping. You're one of the people in this building. The floor is your responsibility today.
Something moved behind his eyes. pride looking for a fight and not quite finding the right angle for one. She'd seen it before, not in men this young, but she'd seen the shape of it. The pride that comes from having never been asked to do something it considered beneath itself. He took the broom. He didn't say anything.
She turned back to the Ferrar behind her. She heard the broom start moving. Across the shop, she caught Daniel watching Delqua with an expression she couldn't fully read. Something between relief and a kind of careful sympathy that looked hard earned for someone his age. Good, she thought.
That's good. Carlos was already at the parts rack, looking at everything with the focused curiosity of someone who finds new environments genuinely interesting. She'd noticed that at the rally. He'd been quiet but watchful, taking things in. She filed that away.
Brett was standing near the Harley. her father's Harley, still under the tarp, still waiting, still the thing she was not yet ready to begin on officially. Because beginning it officially meant assessing it fully, and assessing it fully meant quantifying every inch of the damage in a way that she had been, she admitted to herself, not quite ready to do. "Is that it? " Brett said. She looked up. "Is that what? " "The bike from the parking lot.
Is that the one under the tarp? " The shop got slightly quieter. Not silent, the broom kept moving. Marcus was doing something with an air compressor in the back, but quieter in the way a room gets when everyone in it has been waiting for a particular moment and the moment arrives. Yes, Clare said. Brett looked at the tarp for a long moment.
Can I see it? He said. She put down the wrench. She crossed the shop. She pulled the tarp back.
The damage looked worse under the shop lights than it had in the parking lot at night, which was true of most things, but felt particularly unkind here. The scratch on the tank caught the light and turned into a wound. The broken mirror bracket stuck out at the wrong angle with the particular wrongness of things that have been forced past what they were built to endure. Nobody said anything. Then Deloqua stopped sweeping.
He stood there looking at the bike and his jaw was doing the same thing Daniels had done at the rally. Working something through that his face wasn't sure how to display. That's bad, he said quietly. Genuinely. Yes, Clare said.
How long to fix it? Weeks, she said. Maybe longer depending on parts. The leather on the seat is original. 40 years old.
I have to find someone who can work with it without replacing it because replacing it means losing what's in it. What's in it? Carlos said. She looked at him. He was 20, maybe young enough that the question was completely genuine, without any layer of irony or deflection.
My father's hands, she said. He restitched that seat himself. Every stitch is his. She looked at the seat. If I replace it, it's just leather.
If I repair it, it's still his. The shop was very quiet. Brett said very quietly, "I'm sorry. Not to the room, to the bike. " Clare heard it and it landed differently than she expected. Not as inadequate, which is how apologies to objects usually land, but as genuine, which is rare and more valuable and harder to dismiss.
I know, she said. The grant letter arrived on a Wednesday, not an email, an actual letter which she noticed because everything official in her life arrived by email in the sight of a real envelope on her shop floor where it had come through the mail slot struck her as deliberate. The way things done in old forms sometimes are Sandra Kellerman, Foundation for American Veterans Independence. She held it for a moment without opening it. Marcus came out of the back and saw her standing there.
What's that? He said, "Possibly everything, " she said. "Possibly nothing. Open it. I'm getting there. " Claire, Marcus, you have been standing there for 30 seconds.
I'm aware. She opened the envelope. She read the first paragraph. She read it again. She set the letter down on the workbench.
She picked up her coffee cup. Put it down again. Well, Marcus said. She looked at him. Second round, she said.