"Hm," Bellows said, from somewhere behind me.
I turned around. He was at his bench, not looking at me, doing something unhurried with a set of brake calipers.
"Something on your mind?" he said.
"I'm fine."
"Mm." He turned the caliper over in his hands. "That's the second time you've said that this morning."
"I dropped a wrench."
"You did." He set the caliper down and picked up another one. "How's the kid?"
I looked at my knuckle. It was already swelling slightly, but nothing was broken. "She's okay. Had a rough night."
He nodded, then went back to his calipers.
I went back to the Tacoma.
Five minutes passed. Ten. The belt was going in right, the sequence coming back, my hands finding their way even if my head was somewhere else entirely. I was almost back in it when Bellows spoke again.
"You going to do something about it?" he said. "Or just drop things."
He was still at his bench, still not looking at me. His voice had the same flat and unhurried quality it always had, the same tone he used to tell me about a car's problem or the weather or anything else that was simply a fact in need of acknowledging.
"About what?" I asked.
He gave me a look.
I went back to the Tacoma.
The morning kept moving away from me. I finished the timing belt, moved on to an oil change on a Civic, worked through the job sheet in the methodical way that had always been the thing I was good at—one problem at a time, one task at a time, nothing that couldn't be taken apart and put back together if you knew what you were doing.
The problem was I didn't know what I was doing. Not with this. I knew how to fix an engine. I did not know how to stand in front of Maddie Clarke and say the thing I needed to say, the thing I'd been not-saying for twelve years, and have it come out right. I didn't know if it could come out right. I didn't know if right was even available to me at this point.
What I knew was that it had to be said. That nothing else could happen—nothing real, nothing that lasted—until it was.
At lunch Bellows put two coffees on the shelf and sat on his stool by the door. I cleaned my hands and picked up my mug, then leaned against the wall.
"I need to tell someone something," I said. "Something I should have said a long time ago."
Bellows drank his coffee. His mouth remained shut.
"I don't know how to do it without—" I stopped. "I don't know how it lands."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "Usually lands better than not saying it."
"Usually."
"Not always." He turned the mug in his hands. "But you already know that. That's why you haven't said it." He looked out at the forecourt. "Question is whether you're more afraid of saying it or of not saying it."
I stared at my coffee.
I already knew the answer to that. Had known it since four in the morning, since the hallway, since the way she'd saidmaybe not everlike she was trying to believe it.
"Yeah," I said.
Bellows nodded once. He finished his coffee and got up.