Sarah laughed again.
“Absolutely terrified,” she confirmed.
Toby smiled.
These details changed something. Until that afternoon, Richard Harris had been a photograph and a category: dead father. Elias Cole had been a frightening new category: outlaw, secret identity, missing brother. But a man afraid of dentists who burned pancakes and lied about peach pie was someone Toby could imagine.
Silas told him how Elias taught him to ride on an old stripped-down motorcycle in a dry field outside Fresno. He left out the parts of their youth that did not belong in a ten-year-old's first portrait of his father. He told him about the time Elias fixed a stranded farmworker's truck at midnight and refused payment because the man's wife was in labor. He told him Elias could identify almost any engine problem by smell and sound.
Sarah listened from the armchair with her eyes closed.
Sometimes she corrected him.
Sometimes Silas corrected her.
Between them, Toby began assembling a father.
Near sunset, Silas stood to leave.
He picked up the silver lighter from the coffee table.
Toby's face fell before he could hide it.
Silas noticed.
He turned the lighter in his hand. For fifteen years, he had imagined what he would do if it ever reappeared. He had thought he would lock it in the clubhouse safe. Maybe carry it himself. Maybe place it in a display beneath Elias's photograph.
None of those ideas survived the sight of Toby.
Silas opened the boy's jacket pocket and dropped the lighter inside.
The weight pulled the corduroy down.
“Keep it.”
Toby touched the pocket. “But it was his.”
“Exactly.”
“Shouldn't you have it?”
Silas shook his head. “I had him first. You barely got him at all.”
Toby swallowed.
“It belongs to his son.”
Sarah turned away, wiping her face.
Silas walked toward the door, then stopped.
“Toby.”
The boy looked up.
“School starts next month?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You go.”
Toby frowned. “Okay.”
“You stay in it.”
“I was planning to.”
Silas gave him a look. “Good. You take care of your mother in the ways a ten-year-old is supposed to take care of his mother. Bring her water. Make her laugh.
Pick up your socks. You do not walk four miles in this heat trying to solve mortgage law.”
Toby glanced at Sarah, embarrassed.
Silas's voice softened. “That part belongs to adults.”
Toby nodded.
Silas held out a small card. It had no logo, only a phone number and the name Silas Cole.
“If something happens and you cannot reach me, call the Anchor and say you are Toby Harris.”