“At everybody.”
Bear stared at the black motorcycle.
“I’d been drinking the night I wrecked.”
Rachel’s smile disappeared.
Bear continued before she could respond.
“Not enough for some people to call it drunk.”
“Enough that I should never have been on the bike.”
“I took a curve too fast.”
“No other vehicle.”
“No one else hurt.”
“Just me.”
He looked at Noah.
“Your dad still risked his life getting me away from the bike when the fuel caught.”
Rachel listened.
Bear’s voice dropped.
“I was not worth what he risked that night.”
Rachel’s expression sharpened.
“Don’t say that.”
Bear looked at her.
She stepped closer.
“Adam would have hated that.”
Bear’s jaw tightened.
“He didn’t know me.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“That was his job.”
“No.”
Rachel shook her head.
“His job was treating you.”
“He went back after the second flare-up because your jacket had caught on metal.”
“That was his choice.”
Bear looked at the photograph again.
Rachel continued.
“He came home that morning furious.”
“At me?”
“At his supervisor.”
“He said they almost lost a patient because the ambulance crew didn’t have the extraction blanket where it was supposed to be.”
Bear remembered heat.
A hand around his collar.
A voice cursing.
Rachel smiled faintly.
“He never said ‘I saved somebody.’”
“He said, ‘We almost lost him.’”
Bear’s throat tightened.
Noah whispered:
“Did Dad talk to you?”
Bear nodded.
“What did he say?”
Bear looked at the boy.
He remembered Adam standing beside the hospital window.
He remembered his own leg suspended.
His daughter’s unanswered calls on the bedside table.
The taste of shame.
“He told me I was lucky.”
Noah waited.
Bear continued.
“Then he told me luck was expensive and I should stop wasting it.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
“That was Adam.”
Bear laughed once.
“He was twenty-eight.”
“Talked like he was sixty.”
“He did that.”
Bear stood.
The photograph remained in his hand.
He gave it back carefully.
Rachel held it against her chest.
Noah looked toward the drawing.
Then Bear.
“Are you still mad?”
Bear stared at the motorcycle.
Ray and the other bikers watched.
Rachel said immediately:
“Noah, Mr. Maddox can still be upset.”
“He has every right.”
“I know.”
Bear walked toward the tank.
The white drawing looked almost ridiculous.
A bearded giant.
A boy with arms spread.
Two wheels that could never possibly roll.
He should have been furious.
Instead he saw a dead paramedic.
A child missing a father.
A strange line of chance running through twelve years and ending in white paint on black metal.
Bear reached for the marker in Rachel’s bag.
She looked surprised.
“What are you doing?”
He held out his hand.
Rachel hesitated.
Then gave it to him.
Bear uncapped it.
Noah stared.
Bear leaned over the tank.
He added a third figure.
It was terrible.
Rachel laughed before she could stop herself.
Bear frowned.
“I fabricate steel.”
“I don’t draw.”
Noah moved closer.
The third figure stood in front of the motorcycle.
Small head.
Stick arms.
Something that might have been a medical bag.
Noah whispered:
“Who’s that?”
Bear capped the marker.
“Your dad.”
Rachel started crying again.
Bear looked uncomfortable.
“Please stop doing that.”
She laughed.