His phone vibrated across the workbench.
He almost ignored it.
Then saw the caller.
He answered.
“You break something?”
The mechanic on the other end did not laugh.
“There’s a kid at the children’s hospital.”
The gray-bearded biker kept working.
“There are lots of kids at the children’s hospital.”
“This one asked for a motorcycle.”
The wrench stopped.
“What?”
“Just one.”
The gray-bearded biker straightened.
“Why?”
“Wants to hear one under his window.”
Silence.
The mechanic continued.
“His dad rode.”
The gray-bearded biker looked toward an old photograph pinned above the bench.
Five men stood beside motorcycles in front of a roadside gas station.
One of them was dead.
The gray-bearded biker’s voice changed.
“What’s the kid’s name?”
The mechanic told him.
The wrench slipped from his hand.
It struck the concrete.
He did not pick it up.
“Say that again.”
The mechanic did.
The gray-bearded biker turned toward the photograph.
The dead man in the picture had been twenty-eight there.
No gray.
No illness.
No son yet.
Just a grin large enough to make everybody around him look happier.
The biker whispered:
“How old?”
“Ten.”
He closed his eyes.
Of course.
Ten.
He did the math without wanting to.
Then asked:
“What floor?”
“Fifth.”
“What hospital?”
The mechanic answered.
The gray-bearded biker grabbed his vest from the back of a chair.
“Who told you?”
“Security guy I know.”
“Does the mother know?”
“Know what?”
“That you called me.”
“No.”
“Good.”
The mechanic hesitated.
“You know them?”
The gray-bearded biker did not answer immediately.
Then:
“I knew his father.”
“How well?”
He looked at the old photograph again.
“Well enough.”
He ended the call.
For almost a full minute, he stood still.
Then he walked toward a steel locker in the back of the workshop.
The locker had remained locked for four years.
Not because anybody would steal what was inside.
Because he had not trusted himself to look at it too often.
He opened it.
A black leather vest hung from a hook.
Not his.
Smaller.
Older.
One sleeve had been cut away years before the club stopped pretending sleeves belonged on riding leather.
Across the back was a faded patch.
The gray-bearded biker touched it once.
Then reached inside the vest.
There was an envelope.
Sealed.
His own name written across the front in the dead man’s handwriting.
Beneath it:
ONLY IF MY BOY NEEDS THE ROAD AND I’M NOT THERE.
The gray-bearded biker sat down.
He had read the letter once.
Four years earlier.
The day after the funeral.