They looked through photographs.
The mother showed him childhood pictures.
First birthday.
School play.
Broken arm.
Graduation.
The biker studied each like evidence from a life stolen.
Sometimes he asked too many questions.
Sometimes the mother became angry.
“You cannot interview my childhood.”
“I’m trying to know it.”
“You can't recover every day.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He would become quiet.
Then apologize.
The mother had things to learn too.
She had spent years imagining him.
The real biker was less mysterious.
More irritating.
He forgot to answer messages.
He left motorcycle parts on the kitchen table.
He hated vegetables.
He quietly paid a waitress’s rent after her husband died and threatened everyone who discovered it not to tell her where the money came from.
The mother learned that her own mother had been wrong about one thing.
The biker had never been dangerous to them.
He had been dangerous to the people who hurt them.
There was a difference.
But her grandmother’s fear made sense too.
At nineteen, pregnant, traumatized, holding eyewitness evidence in a murder case, she had trusted federal relocation over a teenage biker with no money and a dead brother.
Maybe it was the only choice she understood.
Nobody alive could ask her.
So they stopped trying to put her on trial in memory.
The girl adapted fastest.
Children often did.
Three months after the diner night, she walked into the biker’s garage while he repaired an old touring motorcycle.
She sat on a stool.
“Teach me.”
“What?”
“That.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you're nine.”
“You said you started at eight.”
The biker stopped.
“Who told you?”
“Mom.”
He muttered something about betrayal.
The girl smiled.
He handed her a flashlight.
“Hold.”
She aimed it badly.
He corrected.
“No.”
“Here.”
She adjusted.
“Better.”
For an hour, she asked questions.
Why cylinders?
Why oil?
Why different engines sounded different?
Why motorcycles leaned but didn't fall?
The biker answered until his patience weakened.
Then she pointed toward the wolf tattoo.
“Why that?”
He looked down.
He had avoided the full story.
Now perhaps it was time.
“Four of us got it.”
“Grandma?”
“Yes.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Who was fourth?”
“The mechanic.”
“What happened to him?”
The biker hesitated.
“He died.”
“How?”
“People said drugs.”
“But?”
He looked at her.
“But now we know he was probably killed too.”
The girl became quiet.
“Everyone with the wolf got hurt.”
The biker had never considered it that way.
“Yes.”
She touched the edge of his forearm carefully.