She began asking questions, then giving input: this spot pinched when she sat; that spot caught when she turned. Boon listened to every word and adjusted according to every word.
"You're the first person who treats what I say as data," she told him one day, "instead of treating it as a symptom." On the fifth day, while waiting for adhesive to cure, Piper told him about the white shoes at the bottom of her closet, about the desert trail at sunset, about the race she never got to run.
She told it in the voice of someone who had rehearsed this story in her head a thousand times, but had never once said it out loud. "Does your mother know you still have the shoes?"
Boon asked. "No."
Piper looked out at the desert.
"My mother can't talk about that day. Eleven years, and we've never said more than two sentences about it.
She just signs checks. Checks are how my mother cries."
Boon was quiet for a long while.
Then he said, "My mother's been gone three years. That chair in the corner was hers.
I still haven't been able to put it away." He tightened a bolt slowly.
"There are things people can't fix, Miss Larkin. I've fixed things my whole life, so I know exactly what can be fixed and what can't.
But I learned one thing. If you can't fix the past, you finish the work the past left undone.
That's all there is to it." On the 10th day, the braces were complete.
They lay on the workbench under the shop light. A frame of aircraft aluminum, slim but solid.
Knee joints that turned as smoothly as a freshly oiled hinge. Tiny oil dampers at the knees and ankles.
Padding contoured to the exact curve of Piper's calves. No logo, no polish, just hand-worked surfaces still bearing the marks of the file.
They were far uglier than the Vitamotion braces and more beautiful in the way that only things built to actually be used can be. "Come early tomorrow," Boon said, his voice fighting to stay level while his hand gripped the edge of the bench.
"We'll try them." That night, neither of them could sleep, and in the estate on the hill, a third person also lay awake for an entirely different reason.
That afternoon, the rehabilitation center had called Genevieve Larkin, asking why for the past two weeks, Piper kept leaving early. On the morning of the 11th day, Piper arrived at the shop at 8:00.
She didn't know that half a mile back, a black SUV had been following her taxi from the moment it left the rehabilitation center. Inside the shop, Boon helped her remove the Vitamotion braces and fitted the new ones.
The instant the final strap clicked into place, Piper felt the difference. Lightness.
So light she thought she was wearing nothing at all. The padding cradled her legs instead of grinding into them.
"Slow now," Boon said, standing an arm's length away, close enough to catch her but far enough to let her stand on her own. "Hold the walker.
Shift your weight gradually. Let your legs get used to not fighting the braces anymore."