"I'm fine."
He grunted and kicked a jack out of his way, turning back toward the Civic. "Second bay. Dodge Ram, rear brakes. Parts are on the shelf. Let’s see what you can do."
No tour, no paperwork. No condolences. Just the work.
I found the parts, found the tools, and got under the truck. The setup was different from what I was used to but the problem wasn't, and my hands found their way without needing to be told. I heard Bellows moving around in the first bay, the occasional clank of something, the radio on low somewhere in the back. Nobody talking.
An hour in, Hank appeared at the edge of the bay. He stood there for a long beat, his shadow falling across my legs while he looked at my progress.
By noon I'd done the brakes and moved on to a Subaru that needed a new alternator, working from a job sheet Bellows had left on the shelf without comment. My back had opinions about the lift height, which was set for someone shorter, so I adjusted the locks and kept going.
At twelve-thirty, Hank appeared with two mugs of coffee. He set one on the shelf next to my wrench and took the other to a stool by the door. He sat there and drank it in silence, watching the rain pool on the forecourt.
I picked up the mug. The coffee was black, bitter, and tasted like it had been sitting on a burner since six in the morning. It was the best thing I’d had all week.
After a while, he spoke without looking over. "Hector’s. You said you worked at Hector’s."
"Three years."
He nodded slowly. "Good man, Hector."
"He was."
We sat with that for a minute. In the back, the radio was playing something acoustic and scratched with static.
"You're a bit slow," Bellows said. Not unkind. Just a fact being placed on the table.
"I'll get faster."
He looked out at the forecourt. "Yeah," he said. "You will."
He finished his coffee, stood up with a series of audible joint pops, and went back to the Civic. That was it. No interview, no hand-holding.
I had a job.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Madison
Tom caught me in the corridor outside the break room, which meant he'd been looking for me. He had his coat on, a coffee in each hand, and he was looking at me with that patient expression I’d stopped deserving somewhere around the second week of March.
"Hate to keep asking," he said, "but the wine tasting. They need numbers by Friday."
I looked at the coffees, then at him. He wasn't even annoyed. He was just waiting for me to come back from wherever I’d gone.
"Tom—"
"It's fine if it's a no," he said, cutting me off with a small, practiced smile. "I just need to know. The gallery needs the list."
It wasn't a no. It wasn't a yes, either. It was the same thing it had been every time he’d asked: a vague intention to get there, to be present, to finally stop being somewhere else. I’d been meaning to "get there" for weeks.
"Can I let you know tomorrow?" I said.
I hated the sound of my own voice. That damned hesitation, that stall. It was the sound of someone who had everything and was still looking for a way out.
He looked at me for a moment. Then he handed me one of the coffees, nodded, and walked on. I stood in the corridor and watched him go, feeling the discomfort of being let off a hook you didn’t deserve to be let off. His patience felt like a debt I had no way of paying back.
I had a pre-op consult at eleven. The patient was seven, a boy named Marco, in for a routine appendectomy that his parents had clearly been losing sleep over for weeks.