For a second Caleb froze.
Memory came.
Gas station.
Blood.
Cancer.
His father.
Everything motorcycles had carried through his life.
Freedom.
Danger.
Loss.
Friendship.
Evidence.
Caleb breathed.
Noah covered his ears and smiled.
Mara waved.
Caleb eased onto the street.
He did not ride north toward Red Mesa.
He rode through town.
Past the school.
Past the grocery store.
Past the park.
Twenty minutes.
Nothing dramatic happened.
That was perfect.
When he returned, Noah waited at the driveway.
Caleb turned off the engine.
Noah asked:
“Were you scared?”
Caleb removed his helmet.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Little.”
Noah smiled.
“Did you go anyway?”
Caleb nodded.
“That's brave?”
Caleb thought.
“Sometimes.”
Noah looked confused.
“When isn't it?”
“When going is just another way to run from something.”
The boy frowned.
“You say weird stuff now.”
“Cancer wisdom.”
“Sounds annoying.”
“It is.”
Mara stepped outside.
“Dinner.”
Caleb covered the motorcycle.
As he did, his hand moved across the fuel tank.
The place where Harold’s blood had dried months earlier.
Nothing remained.
No stain.
No mark.
But Caleb remembered.
That stain had begun one of the strangest chains of events in his life.
A violent roadside morning.
A hidden hospital envelope.
A son asking about death.
A criminal investigation.
A father’s thirty-year-old disappearance.
Remission.
A keychain.
Not today.
Caleb closed the garage.
Two years passed.
Cancer did not return.
Every scan made Caleb sick with anxiety before it confirmed good news.
He learned there was a phrase for that.
Scanxiety.
He hated the word.
Accurate anyway.
Harold Bennett recovered fully.
He moved to New Mexico near his daughter.
Before leaving, he visited Caleb once more.
They stood beside the Harley.
Harold touched the tank lightly.
“Still my blood?”
“Not since the first week.”
“Shame.”
“Added character.”
“Your blood wasn't the part I wanted.”
Harold smiled.
Then handed Caleb a photograph.
Old.
Faded.
Two men outside a motorcycle shop.
One was James Mercer.
Young.
Dark hair.
Leather jacket.
Grinning.
Beside him stood another mechanic.
Caleb stared.
“Where?”
“Police evidence archive.”
“They let me copy it.”
Caleb looked at his father’s face.
He had forgotten how young James had been.
Parents froze at the age children remembered them.
Caleb once imagined his father as old because fathers were old.
In the photograph James was thirty-four.
Younger than Caleb was when Noah was born.
Harold pointed to the motorcycle behind him.
“Your father built that engine.”
Caleb smiled faintly.
“Could tune anything.”