Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jack
Aweek in and I'd learned a few things.
Lily took her cereal dry. No milk, just the flakes in the bowl, which she ate methodically from left to right.
She needed the hall light on to fall asleep but would get up to kill it sometime in the night; by dawn, the house was always dark.
She watched the same cartoon three mornings running without appearing to actually like it, just sitting there while she woke up, like it was a ritual rather than a preference.
She was patient with me in the way of a child who had decided, quietly, to make the best of a bad situation.
She was also five years old and she hadn't laughed once.
Not properly. A few small smiles, the corners of her mouth doing something brief before it went away again.
I didn't know what her laugh sounded like.
I didn't know if she was always like this or if grief had taken something and wasn't giving it back yet.
I didn't know enough about her to know the difference, which was its own kind of problem.
We were making progress, though. Slow, careful progress, the kind that didn't look like much from the outside.
She'd stopped watching me from across the room.
She'd started telling me things—small, unprompted facts—the way kids did when they'd decided you're probably going to stick around.
Yesterday she'd told me her rabbit's name was Gerald. I hadn't known it had a name.
Monday morning, she was up before me. I found her in the kitchen in her school uniform, backpack already on, eating her dry cereal in the grey light of the toaster.
"You're ready," I said.
"You have to sign the planner," she said, sliding a blue book across the laminate. "And I need my water bottle. It's in the cupboard above the sink."
I found the bottle. She showed me where to sign and I scribbled my name without knowing what I was signing. She checked it and, apparently satisfied, put the planner back in her bag.
"Anything else?" I asked.
She thought about it for a second, her brow furrowed. "That's it."
We walked to school. It was a ten minute walk, maybe fifteen at Lily's pace, through quiet streets that were starting to feel familiar in the way of places you walked every day without looking.
She pointed out a cat on a wall as we passed—just pointed, didn't say anything—and I nodded. We kept walking.
The school was a low red-brick building behind a painted fence. Other kids were arriving in a chaotic swarm of neon backpacks, parents with strollers, a woman with a clipboard by the door. The usual Monday morning engine, revving up.
I felt it before I saw it. The looks. A woman near the gate glanced at Lily and then at me, her eyes skittering away with a careful, mournful, expression.
It was the look people give a car wreck when they’re trying to be polite.
A man did the same. A group of mothers went quiet as we passed, their conversation resuming in a hushed, frantic whisper once we were out of range.
Lily didn't seem to notice. Or she’d already decided not to care, which felt more like her.
I crouched down at the gate.
"Okay?" I said.
She adjusted the strap of her backpack, a small, sharp movement of her shoulder. "Yes."
"I'll be here at three-fifteen," I said. It sounded less like a promise and more like a hard deadline.
She nodded. Then she looked at me for a moment with those serious eyes, and I thought she was going to say something, but she didn't. She just turned and walked through the gate and joined the stream of kids heading inside without looking back.
I stood there until she'd gone through the door.
The woman with the clipboard caught my eye as I turned to leave. "You must be Lily's uncle," she said. It wasn't unkind. It was just that hushed gentleness people use when they’ve been briefed on a disaster.
"Jack Henley," I said.
"Mrs. Alvarez. Her teacher." She looked at me steadily, her expression softening. "She's a lovely girl, Mr. Henley. We'll take good care of her."
"Thank you," I said.
I meant it, but I also wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere the pity couldn't find me, somewhere I could just be a man going to work and not a tragedy in progress. I walked back through the gate and didn't slow down.
Bellows Auto was twelve minutes away.
* * *
The garage was small and looked it—a two-bay operation on a side street off Millhaven Road.
A hand-painted sign hung above the door, touched up recently but not recently enough to hide the weathering.
Two cars sat on the forecourt, hoods up, waiting for parts or a miracle.
Inside, it smelled like the best parts of my life: oil, burnt rubber, and old coffee.
It had that heavy warmth of a workspace that ran its heaters hard to keep the March damp at bay.
Hank Bellows was under a Civic when I walked in.
Just his legs were visible—faded work pants and scuffed boots—moving with the rhythm of a man who’d learned that rushing only leads to stripped bolts.
He rolled out on his creeper when he heard the door, took his time getting to his feet, and looked me over.
He didn't make a show of it, but I felt the weight of the appraisal.
He was in his mid-sixties and heavyset, with a grey beard that had stopped being intentional years ago. He moved with a guarded stiffness, the kind that becomes a habit when your back or your knees have started keeping score.
"Henley," he said.
"Mr. Bellows."
"Hank." He looked at my hands, then at my face. "You eaten?"
"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.