Inside the Workshop

Mara didn’t let Lucy touch a motorcycle.

She said it with her jaw set and both hands on the truck door, like the words were a latch she could keep shut. The club heard her. Nobody argued.

Hammer stood by the passenger side with his head lowered. Colt had already killed the engine. Three club trucks rolled into the lot behind them, and the sound of the workshop door opening came through the heat.

Lucy sat between Mara and the window, fingers locked in her shirt hem.

The Iron Saints shop did not look like a den. It looked like work.

Benches. Parts bins. A row of helmets on hooks. A folding table with canned soup, diapers, and a stack of backpacks with scuffed knees on the fabric. Along one wall, a corkboard held thank-you notes in blocky kid writing. A paper chain hung over the coffee maker. One drawing showed a motorcycle with four stick figures on it and a sun that had too many rays.

The diner owner, who had come with them in her apron and white sneakers, let out a breath.

“Well,” she said. “That’s not what town likes to imagine.”

Colt set his keys on the counter before he spoke.

“Town imagines a lot.”

No one smiled.

Hammer led them to a metal locker bank at the back. He stopped at the seventeenth door and took out a key on a wire loop. Lucy saw how careful his hand was. He did not look at her when he turned it.

The door opened with a soft scrape.

Inside sat a shoebox, a bandanna, a stack of envelopes tied with twine, and a child-sized vest folded flat as if someone had just put it away. Beside it lay a small recorder and a manila folder with Lucy’s name written on it in Owen’s angled print.

Lucy reached first for the vest.

It was black leather, but light. The back had a rook stitched in the center and her name beneath it in blue thread. She ran her thumb over the letters.

Mara made a sound under her breath, small and rough.

“That was his,” she said.

Hammer nodded once.

“Made for her.”

Lucy looked up at the locker shelf. “What’s in the folder?”

“Letters,” Colt said. “And a birthday list. Owen was organized when he wanted to be.”

The diner owner took one of the envelopes, then put it back without opening it.

“Who keeps all this going?”

Hammer answered without lifting his head.

“Me.”

Mara’s mouth tightened. “For years?”

“Yes.”

Lucy hugged the little vest to her chest. The leather smelled like dust and old sun.

The recorder sat in plain sight, its red button scratched white at the edge. Hammer reached for it, then stopped with his hand in the air.

“Battery’s fresh,” he said.

He looked at Lucy then, just once.

“You want to hear him?”

The recorder clicked.