Mara shut the engine down after the brief test and began explaining the remaining inspection work. Eli grinned and interrupted with an answer before she had finished. "Don't 'obviously' me," she said when he tried to sound like an expert. "I taught you that."
Eli folded his arms. "You taught me the principle. I already understood the application."
Mara turned toward Rhett with a look of theatrical despair. "He's going to be insufferable." Rhett laughed, the sound surprising even himself. "He's Caleb's son," he said. "You should've expected it." Norah watched them from the doorway, smiling through tears she made no attempt to hide.
Later, when the others had returned to the common room, Eli stood beside the motorcycle with Rhett. The garage smelled of warm metal and old rubber, and the spring sun reached through the open doors in a broad rectangle. Eli touched the watch on his wrist, turning the scratched crystal toward the light. The band still fit loosely, and Norah had promised to have a watchmaker adjust it without altering the original case.
"Why did you keep wearing it?" Eli asked. Rhett knew which object he meant. He had expected the question since the night the boy first appeared in the rain, but he had not known how he would answer when it came without anger or suspicion. Now, in the warm garage, the answer was simpler than all the explanations he had rehearsed.
"Because I promised your dad I wouldn't lose it," he said. "And because after he died, wearing it reminded me that knowing somebody mattered doesn't stop being true when they're gone." Eli looked at the watch, then at the repaired motorcycle. "You thought about him every day?" he asked.
"Not every minute," Rhett said. "Sometimes I was busy and forgot for a while. Sometimes I was angry with him for leaving me questions I couldn't answer. But yes, almost every day, something happened that made me wish I could tell him about it."
Eli considered that. "I used to think remembering him meant being sad all the time," he said. "When I was little, I was afraid if I stopped feeling bad, it meant I didn't love him enough. Then I started looking for Hale's trucks, and being angry felt easier than being sad."
Rhett let the words settle. "Grief can turn into work when there's nowhere else for it to go," he said. "Your dad knew that about himself, too. But he wouldn't want the work to be all you have. He'd want school and friends and arguments over machines and somebody reminding you to put on a coat when it's cold."
"Mom does that," Eli said, sounding mildly offended. Rhett smiled. "Then she's already doing part of the job." The boy glanced toward the common room, where Norah was talking to Mara and Deak was reading a parts catalog. "And you do the other part?" he asked.