Around midnight, he heard the back door open.
He went downstairs.
The father sat on the patio steps holding two bottles of beer.
He lifted one.
The biker sat beside him.
For a while they listened to insects in the yard.
The father spoke first.
“I used to imagine them.”
“Who?”
“My biological parents.”
The biker waited.
“When I was a kid, I thought maybe my father was a pilot.”
“Why?”
“I liked airplanes.”
The biker smiled.
“Good logic.”
“Then I decided my mother was probably a teacher because I liked school.”
“Also good logic.”
“I never imagined a brother.”
The biker looked at the yard.
“I never imagined you either.”
The father twisted the bottle in his hands.
“Does that bother you?”
“What?”
“That I exist.”
The biker turned.
“No.”
“Not even a little?”
“No.”
“Why?”
The biker thought.
“Because the second I saw your face, I felt like something made sense before I understood what it was.”
The father looked down.
The biker continued.
“I spent my whole life thinking I was bad at being alone because I was weak.”
The father looked at him.
“I hated empty houses. Hated eating alone. Hated traveling alone even though I did it constantly.”
The father nodded slowly.
“I’m the same way.”
The biker smiled without humor.
“Maybe we were born expecting someone beside us.”
The father stared into the dark yard.
“Maybe.”
The next morning, the father showed him the motorcycle.
It sat beneath a gray cover in the garage.
When he pulled the cover away, the biker laughed again.
Same model.
Same year.
Different color.
Even some modifications matched.
The father pointed.
“Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was.”
They spent the morning comparing repairs.
The little girl sat on an overturned bucket and watched.
At one point the father handed the biker a wrench without asking.
It was exactly the size he needed.
They both noticed.
Neither commented.
By afternoon, the biker’s sister arrived.
She had driven nearly four hours.
The moment she stepped from her car and saw the father, she stopped.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
The father stood near the driveway.
The biker watched his sister’s face collapse.
She walked toward the father slowly.
“I’m sorry.”
Those were the first words she said.
The father did not know what to do with them.
“For what?”
“For knowing there might be something and not finding out.”
“You were a kid.”
“I was seventeen.”
“You were a kid.”
She began crying.
The father hugged her.
The biker turned away because watching it hurt too much.
Inside, the sister spread the old documents across the dining table.
The original adoption correspondence revealed more details.
Their mother had written several letters to the adoptive family but never mailed them.
She had asked whether the second child was healthy.
Whether he slept well.