The seventy-six-year-old biker had spent his entire life believing that a man should never cry in front of a child.
But when the eight-year-old boy lying in the hospital bed asked why his mother no longer loved him, the old man's hands began trembling so badly that he nearly dropped the scorched motorcycle key he'd been carrying for nineteen days.
The little boy stared up at him.
His head was shaved, his cheeks were pale, and faint healing burn scars marked one side of his face. He wore a soft pink hospital shirt, and a cream-colored blanket covered his legs.
His small fingers rested against the edge of the blanket.
He had been in that room for almost three weeks.
During the first few days, nurses had come and gone constantly. Doctors examined him. Therapists helped him practice ordinary movements that had suddenly become exhausting. A hospital social worker brought coloring books, and volunteers decorated the window with paper stars.
But one person had stopped coming.
His mother.
At first, the boy told himself she was working.
Then he imagined she was sick.
Then, after eleven consecutive days without seeing her, he began wondering whether she'd decided she didn't want him anymore.
That afternoon, he finally asked the question he'd been afraid to say aloud.
"Did Mommy stop coming because I got burned?"
The old biker stood beside the bed.
He was an enormous man, even at seventy-six.
His shoulders remained broad beneath a faded olive-gray T-shirt, and his powerful arms were covered with old tattoos and the faded marks of a lifetime spent working around motorcycles.
A black leather vest hung open over his chest.
The leather was scratched and weathered, with a motorcycle club emblem stitched over one side.
His thick gray beard was uneven.
A white medical bandage wrapped around his forehead, where a falling piece of wood had injured him during the fire.
His left cheek still showed the faint discoloration of a healing bruise.
He looked like the kind of man strangers might cross a parking lot to avoid.
Yet as he stood beside the little boy, there was nothing frightening about him.
Only grief.
The child watched him carefully.
"Did I do something wrong?"
The biker swallowed.
"No, son."
"Then why doesn't she come?"
The old man looked toward the window.