She held a little cloth square behind her back.
“Dad, you have to close your eyes.”
I groaned.
“Mara, it's five in the morning.”
“Close them.”
I obeyed.
She climbed onto the bed, placed something in my hand, then stepped backward.
“Okay.”
I opened my eyes.
A small embroidered patch lay in my palm.
Cream-colored canvas.
Blue stitching.
Three letters.
DAD.
The D was crooked. The A had one side longer than the other, and she'd accidentally stitched a tiny red line into the corner after her blue thread ran out.
It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever received.
I looked toward her.
“Did you make this?”
She nodded proudly.
“All by myself.”
I turned it over.
The stitches were uneven.
Some loose.
Some pulled too tight.
But every one had been made by her hands.
I looked toward Linda, who stood in the doorway smiling.
Then back at Mara.
“Where am I supposed to put it?”
She pointed toward my leather vest hanging on the chair.
“Right there.”
Over my heart.
I smiled.
“That's where the expensive club patches go.”
Mara frowned.
For a moment, she looked hurt.
Then I laughed and pulled her into my arms.
“Good thing this is the most expensive patch I own.”
I sewed it on that morning.
Not especially well.
The stitching held, but a corner curled.
Mara complained about it for weeks.
“Dad, you're supposed to put the needle through the edge.”
“I know.”
“You missed it.”
“I know.”
She shook her head with the seriousness of a master seamstress dealing with an incompetent apprentice.
Finally, she grabbed the vest and repaired the corner herself.
That's where the red stitch came from.
She was so proud that I wore the vest everywhere.
To the garage.
To club meetings.
On long rides.
Even to the grocery store when Linda asked me not to look like I was preparing for a bank robbery.
Mara would point at the patch whenever someone asked about my tattoos.
“That's mine,” she'd announce.
And I'd answer.
“Best one on the whole vest.”
I meant it.
For seventeen years, that little word sat over my heart.
Then came the night on Route 66.
And afterward, I couldn't bear to look at it anymore.
Mara was twenty-nine when she married Evan Shaw.
Evan was an emergency medical technician from Arizona with sandy hair, a crooked smile, and the quiet confidence of a man who had seen enough difficult situations to stop pretending life always followed a plan.
He wasn't a biker.
He drove a beat-up blue pickup truck.
He wore ordinary work boots.