Eli’s chest tightened.
“Placement.”
“That doesn’t automatically mean a group home.”
“It always means somewhere I don’t know.”
Denise paused.
“That part is fair.”
Grant shifted in the doorway.
Denise looked at him.
“You still licensed?”
Grant’s face hardened.
Jonah answered.
“Technically, yes.”
Eli looked between them.
“Licensed for what?”
Nobody spoke.
Denise folded her hands.
“Mr. Holloway used to be a foster parent.”
Eli stared at Grant.
Grant stared back.
The coldest man in the garage had once taken in kids with nowhere to go.
It made no sense.
Eli turned away first.
“I have a motorcycle to fix.”
By noon, Eli had eliminated nearly every conventional cause.
Mercy had compression.
Mercy had fuel.
Mercy had spark.
Timing was close enough to start.
Yet the engine refused.
He removed the seat.
Checked the harness.
Tested resistance.
Pulled connectors one by one.
Grant watched from a distance.
At one point Eli caught him looking at the brass wrench.
The boy deliberately put it in his pocket.
Grant shook his head.
“Nothing.”
“You know that bird.”
Grant walked away.
Eli followed.
“Who did it belong to?”
“What did your mother tell you?”
“Then ask Jonah.”
“He lies.”
“He didn’t lie.”
“He said he didn’t know my mother.”
Grant’s mouth tightened.
“That may be true.”
“May?”
“Kid, I am not the person you want answering these questions.”
“Because I don’t know which answers are mine to give.”
That sounded like something Eli’s mother would have said.
He hated it.
He returned to Mercy.
At three in the afternoon, he found something.
A wire leading from the ignition module disappeared beneath the tank.
At first, nothing looked unusual.
Then Eli noticed a section wrapped in cloth tape rather than standard electrical tape.
He peeled it carefully.
Underneath was an old solder joint.
Not broken.
Intentional.
A second wire branched away and vanished into the frame.
“Jonah.”
The club leader appeared.
“Did this motorcycle have a security system?”
“Alarm?”
“Kill switch besides the handlebar?”
Eli pointed.
“Then what’s that?”
Jonah crouched.
His face changed.
Grant came over.
Jonah touched the extra wire.
“I’ve never seen this.”
“You’ve owned the bike nine years.”
“I didn’t say I owned it.”
“Whose is it?”
Jonah stood.
“The club’s.”
Grant said, “Eli.”
The boy stood too.
“No. Everybody knows something except me.”
Jonah rubbed his face.
“What do you want to know?”
Jonah looked toward Grant.
Eli exploded.
“Stop doing that!”
Both men froze.
“Stop looking at each other every time I say her name!”
His voice cracked.
“She was my mom. Mine. Not yours. If you know something, tell me.”
Jonah inhaled slowly.
“I knew a woman a long time ago.”
Eli stared.
“She called herself Mara?”
“Lena Vale.”
The surname meant nothing.
But the first name did.
Eli remembered hospital forms.
One line his mother had crossed out years ago.
A Christmas card she had burned without opening.
A woman at a grocery store once calling after her, Lena!
His mother had grabbed Eli’s hand and left the cart behind.
“That was her name,” Eli whispered.
Jonah’s eyes sharpened.
“She used Lena sometimes.”
Grant sat heavily on a stool.
Jonah’s face went pale.
“Eli, what was your mother’s full name?”
“Mara Lena Mercer.”
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Eli saw tears standing in the eyes of a man who looked built to survive hurricanes.
Jonah whispered, “She was alive.”
Eli’s anger vanished beneath confusion.
“You knew her?”
Jonah turned back.
“How?”
He looked toward Mercy.
Then toward the old wooden sign that read IRON LANTERNS.
“She helped build this place.”
Lena Vale had been nineteen when she first walked into the garage.
That was fifteen years earlier.
Back then, the Iron Lanterns were not much of a club. Eight people, three unreliable motorcycles, a rented storage unit, and a founder named Thomas Vale who believed any person who could hold a wrench could be taught to repair something.
Thomas had a daughter.
Lena.
“She was better than all of us,” Jonah said.
They sat around the same folding table where Denise had interviewed Eli.
Eli had not moved for almost an hour.
“She could hear a bad bearing across a parking lot. She rebuilt her first transmission at sixteen. Your grandfather used to say she had oil in her veins.”
“My grandfather?”
“Thomas Vale.”
Eli stared toward Mercy.
“The man who owned that motorcycle.”
Jonah nodded.
Eli felt as though the room had shifted beneath him.
“Why did Mom change her name?”
Jonah glanced at Grant.
Grant looked at the floor.
“There was a fire,” Jonah said.
“What kind of fire?”
“The garage burned.”
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago.”