The father's eyes filled.
He continued reading.
I wish I could tell you about the things I'm building. Sometimes I hear myself saying exactly what you used to say about engines. It makes me laugh, then it makes me miss you.
He lowered the page.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
He opened another letter.
This one contained a wedding photograph.
His son wore a dark suit.
His wife smiled beside him.
And the little girl, then much younger, stood in front holding a small bouquet of white flowers.
The father's hands trembled.
He should've been there.
He should've stood beside his son.
Shaken his hand.
And told him how proud he was.
Instead, the letter remained hidden in a dusty storage room.
He looked toward the attorney.
"Why are these here?"
The lawyer examined the file.
The envelopes appeared to have been received through the business mailing address and held among documents associated with the partner's administrative office.
Some were unopened.
Others had been opened and folded again.
The records specialist documented the finding.
For a moment, the old mechanic looked toward the old office below.
He imagined his business partner seeing the letters arrive.
Recognizing the handwriting.
And deciding the father should never read them.
He couldn't prove every detail of how the correspondence ended up there.
But he knew one thing.
His son had written.
Repeatedly.
And the letters never reached him.
The old mechanic sat on an old wooden chair.
Then began crying.
Not quietly.
Not with the restrained tears he'd tried to hide at the hospital.
He cried with the grief of a man who finally understood that years of his life had been taken from him by his own stubbornness and possibly by someone else's deliberate deception.
The attorney remained nearby.
He didn't interrupt.
The younger mechanic who had accompanied them stood at the doorway.
For several minutes, nobody spoke.
Finally, the old biker looked toward the wedding photograph.
Then whispered.
"I'm so sorry, son."
The discovery of the letters changed something inside Iron Hollow.
The old mechanic gathered the employees after closing one evening.
They stood near the center service bay, surrounded by motorcycles in various stages of repair.
For several seconds, he looked at the men.
Then he began speaking.
He told them about the charity-fund dispute.
The missing records.
The evidence that contradicted his son's supposed guilt.