Noah looked toward the registration tent.
His grandmother was walking toward them now, concerned.
Before Noah answered, Grant rotated the miniature motorcycle.
Something caught the sunlight beneath the seat.
A brass plate.
Almost hidden between the frame rails.
Grant wiped his thumb across it.
Letters appeared.
The world around him seemed to disappear.
LUCAS JAMES MERCER
Grant stopped breathing.
His hands tightened around the toy.
Noah immediately reached forward.
“Careful.”
Grant barely heard him.
Lucas James Mercer.
His younger brother.
The brother Grant had not seen in twelve years.
The brother whose name had been removed from the Iron Hollow membership wall.
The brother Grant had once promised their dying mother he would always protect.
The brother Grant had failed.
Noah touched the tiny front tire nervously.
“That was my dad.”
Grant lifted his eyes.
“What did you say?”
“My dad.”
Grant stared at the child.
Noah shifted uneasily.
“His name was Lucas Mercer.”
The fundraiser continued around them.
Music.
Engines.
Laughter.
Somebody called raffle numbers from a microphone.
Grant heard none of it.
He looked at Noah’s face again.
Not generally.
Carefully.
The shape of the chin.
Brown eyes with tiny flecks of green.
A slight crookedness in the left eyebrow.
Lucas had broken his eyebrow open when he was fourteen after trying to jump a creek on a dirt bike. The scar left one brow permanently uneven.
Noah had the same shape.
Genetics, not injury.
Still.
Grant whispered:
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“When…”
His voice failed.
“When did your father die?”
Noah looked down.
“March.”
Grant’s knees weakened.
He set the little motorcycle carefully on the pavement before he dropped it.
Noah’s grandmother reached them.
She was in her mid-sixties, slender, silver-haired, wearing jeans and a soft blue cardigan despite the afternoon heat.
She looked from Grant to Noah.
“Everything all right?”
Noah nodded slowly.
“I think he knows Dad.”
Grant stood.
The grandmother’s face changed.
“You’re Grant.”
He stared.
“You know me?”
“Lucas talked about you.”
Grant’s chest tightened.
“What did he say?”
The woman looked toward Noah.
“Not here.”
Grant understood.
Pain had already become spectacle once today.
He was not going to do that to the child again.
He looked toward the clubhouse building across the lot.
“My office is quieter.”
Noah immediately picked up the miniature motorcycle.
His grandmother touched his shoulder.
“You okay?”
He nodded.
Then looked at Grant.
“Dad said I had to show him something else.”
Grant’s pulse accelerated again.
“What?”
Noah sat on the edge of a picnic bench.
He turned the tiny motorcycle sideways.
Then pressed a nearly invisible metal latch beneath the seat.
Grant stared.
The little leather saddle lifted.
A hidden compartment had been built inside the miniature fuel tank.
Noah inserted two fingers.
He removed a worn silver ring.