The garage fell quiet again once Clara’s car pulled out onto the highway, its taillights fading into the gray autumn dusk. The smell of beef and carrots drifted through the greasy air, cutting through the scent of old oil and solvent.
I ladled the soup into two mismatched ceramic bowls I’d dug out of the breakroom cabinet, handing one to Sarah and the other to Leo, who immediately wrapped both small hands around the warm ceramic to thaw his fingers. They ate in silence, sitting side by side on the low crate, the steam rising up between them.
I didn't eat. I walked back over to the workbench, picked up the intake manifold, and stared at the dark metal without seeing it. My mind was racing, turning over every rusted gear of my past life that I thought I’d buried deep enough that it would never see the light again.
Twenty years ago, I thought leaving was the only noble thing I could do. I was a kid from a broken home with a stolen motorcycle and a bad name, convinced that anyone who got close to me would eventually get dragged down into the same gutter. I left Sarah behind with a folded note and a twenty-dollar bill, running south until the road ran out in California, then drifting back north years later to hide behind the grease and iron of Oakhaven.
And now, here they were, dropped right onto my doorstep like an unpaid debt I’d finally run out of time to settle.
"Jax?"
I looked down. Leo was standing beside my workbench, holding his empty bowl with both hands. A small smudge of carrot broth was dried on his chin.
"Yeah, Leo?"
"My mom said you have a big bike," he said, looking up at me with those bright, hopeful hazel eyes that didn't know how to let go. "The one outside under the tarp. Does it go fast?"
I looked past him toward the corner of the garage, where my old shovelhead chopper sat under a heavy canvas cover—the machine that carried me away from everything I was afraid of.
"Fast enough," I said, my voice rough.
Leo hesitated for a second, then reached into the pocket of his oversized jacket and pulled out that small, folded piece of paper—the one he’d held in the diner, worn soft and frayed at the creases from being clutched in a little boy's hand for a thousand miles. He didn't hand it to me this time; he just laid it gently on the edge of the workbench, right next to the socket set.
May you like
"Mom keeps it in her pocket," he whispered. "She said you wrote it. She said it means you're not a ghost."
I stared down at the folded paper. I didn't touch it. But as the wind howled softly against the corrugated metal siding of the garage, I knew the ghost stories were over. I was right here, and there was nowhere left to run.
