Then the smile vanished.
“He trusted me with this.”
“And you hid for six months.”
Russell looked toward Pete.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Knock on the widow’s door?”
“Say hello, your husband lied to you about a twelve-hundred-cubic-centimeter piece of his youth?”
Pete considered.
“Could’ve started with casserole.”
Russell stared.
“What?”
“That’s what normal people bring widows.”
“I don’t cook.”
“Exactly why God invented grocery stores.”
Russell turned away.
Pete looked toward the diner.
“You can still do it right.”
Russell laughed bitterly.
“Not sure Caleb left instructions for that.”
Pete nodded toward the motorcycle.
“Maybe he did.”
Russell looked at him.
Pete pointed toward the hidden plate.
“You ever take that seat off since he brought it here?”
Russell’s face changed.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t need to.”
Pete raised one eyebrow.
“You’re a mechanic.”
“You take seats off motorcycles that aren’t broken just to avoid emotional conversations.”
Russell stared.
Pete smiled.
“Worth checking.”
Russell did not check.
Not that day.
He rolled the burgundy Harley into the rear bay of his shop and covered it with a black canvas sheet.
The silver half-symbol disappeared beneath it.
At the Parker house, Owen did not stop asking questions.
Anna lasted eleven minutes.
“Did Dad ride that bike?”
“I don’t know.”
“You saw the picture.”
“Yes.”
“Was Bear Dad’s friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“He knew him.”
“Owen.”
“Did Dad lie?”
The question struck harder than anything Russell had said.
Anna gripped the steering wheel.
They were already parked in their driveway.
She had not turned off the engine.
Owen sat beside her in the rear seat because six months earlier, after Caleb died, he stopped wanting to sit in the front of anything.
The front passenger seat had belonged to Dad.
The rule made no logical sense.
Grief rarely did.
Anna looked back.
“Your father loved you.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Eight years old.
Caleb had always said the child inherited Anna’s ability to detect avoidance.
She hated hearing it now.
“He may have kept something from me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you hate motorcycles?”
Anna looked toward the house.
The home she and Caleb had bought twelve years earlier.
White siding.
Blue shutters.
Small front porch.
One gutter still slightly crooked because Caleb kept saying he would fix it next weekend.
Next weekend had become a dangerous phrase.
“Yes.”
Owen waited.
Anna corrected herself.
“I hated what they meant to me.”
“What did they mean?”
She turned off the engine.
“Come inside.”
Owen did not move.
“Mom.”
She looked back.
He was holding the silver marker.
Anna’s chest tightened.
“Your father was different before I met him.”
“Bad?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Young.”
Owen frowned.
“That’s not bad.”
“No.”
“It isn’t.”
Anna unbuckled.
“Your dad grew up in foster homes.”
Owen knew that.
Fragments.
Not details.
“His mother died when he was twelve.”
“His father had already disappeared.”
“He lived with three different families before he turned eighteen.”
“He got into trouble.”
“What trouble?”
“Fights.”
“Skipping school.”
“Stealing?”
“Once.”
Owen’s eyes widened.
“What?”
“A motorcycle part.”
That almost made him smile.