“We need to make some calls.”
“I know a guy.”
“I know you know a guy.”
Jimmy nodded.
“Call him.”
“I don’t need…”
“Sky.”
Jimmy stopped her.
“You came in here. You proved what you can do.”
He gestured toward the tank.
“You told us who you are.”
His voice lowered.
“That matters to us. Luther mattered to us.”
Sky looked away.
“You are not going to stand inside this garage and tell us not to help you.”
He waited.
“That’s not how this works here.”
Sky’s jaw tightened.
Her eyes were bright.
Not tears exactly.
Close enough to them.
“I’m not used to people helping.”
“I know.”
Jimmy’s voice softened.
“That’s going to change today.”
Sky swallowed.
Then looked back.
“Okay.”
The same word as before.
Quiet.
Containing everything she could not say aloud.
Gregory went to make the call.
Jimmy returned to the Softail.
The garage resumed around Sky.
Not the same way.
Nothing was the same now.
But it was alive.
Moving.
Real.
Devlin came to stand beside her.
Not crowding.
Just there.
“You hungry?”
“I’m always hungry.”
It was the first thing she had said all day that sounded like something an eighteen-year-old might say if she were not working every second to hold herself together.
Devlin went into the back.
He returned with a sandwich.
Turkey.
Sky hated turkey.
She ate every bite.
Devlin noticed.
He understood what that meant.
He did not mention it.
Sky worked through the afternoon.
She painted a gas tank for a 2009 Road King.
A bald eagle coming through storm clouds with enough detail to make Strand stop once.
Then twice.
Then a third time.
She painted a fender for Carver’s personal motorcycle.
Carver said he wanted simple lettering.
Sky added a single hawk feather dropping from the top of the text.
Carver stared at it.
“That stays.”
He said it like permission.
What he meant was warmer than permission.
By four in the afternoon, three men had quietly approached her bench asking what she charged for personal work.
Sky quoted numbers that were too low.
Jimmy overheard.
“Double that.”
Sky looked over.
“I thought you weren’t paying me yet.”
“I’m not.”
Jimmy pointed at the other men.
“They are.”
It was the most economically sensible conversation Sky had experienced in fourteen months.
At 5:15, Gregory returned after spending time on the phone.
He found Jimmy in the rear room.
They talked for eleven minutes with the door closed.
Sky did not try to listen.
She kept painting.
But she noticed the eleven minutes.
And she noticed Gregory’s face when he came out.
He looked like someone who had received information he expected but had hoped would not be confirmed.
He walked toward her bench.