"I used to be. " She said. "I'm not sure anymore. " Daniel straightened up from the Triumph and rolled his shoulders. "She's ready. " He said. He pulled the invoice pad from his back pocket and wrote for a moment. "Fuel line and labor. " "$60. " Riley stared at him. "$60. " She repeated.
"Parts and an hour of time. " He tore the invoice off and held it out. She'd paid $$340 to have the same bike looked at in Denver by a shop that had replaced nothing and found nothing wrong. She opened her mouth, closed it, and took the invoice. "I'd like to pay more. " She said. "$60 covers it. " He said. He wasn't stubborn about it, just certain, the way he was certain about fuel lines and brake pads.
She paid in cash. She stood at the garage door and watched the snow coming down, still heavy, and understood, without being told, that riding out into this was a bad idea. "Is there anywhere to stay nearby? " She asked. He looked at the storm. "Not that you'd reach on that bike tonight. " A pause.
He looked at Sophie, who was watching both of them with the interest of someone who has been hoping for something. Then he looked back at Riley. "There's a couch in the front room. It's warm. You can leave when the storm breaks. " "I can't impose. " "Sophie made you hot chocolate. " He said.
"You're already here. " The front room of the Carter house, attached to the garage by a short hallway, was small and warm and organized in the way that single-parent homes are organized, not elegantly, but with clear system. Books on the shelves were arranged partly by size and partly by some logic that must have made sense to Sophie because a picture book about penguins was shelved between a Robert Frost collection and a home repair manual. A drawing of a house with three figures was taped above the light switch. The couch had three different blankets on it and the throw pillows were slightly wrong, the kind of slightly wrong that comes from a child helping. The wood stove in the corner was burning low.
Daniel added two logs without being asked and adjusted the damper with the practiced movement of a man who has done this every winter evening for years. "Bathroom's through there. " He said. "I'll get you a dry shirt. " He disappeared and came back with a flannel shirt that was too big for her by about four sizes and a pair of wool socks. He handed them over without comment or ceremony. Sophie was clearly fighting sleep from the armchair.
Gerald clutched to her chest, her eyes at half-mast. "I'm not tired. " She told no one. "I know. " Daniel said. He scooped her up. She folded against his shoulder with the automatic ease of long habit and carried her out.
Riley heard the low murmur of his voice down the hallway and Sophie's responses getting slower and quieter and then nothing. She changed into the flannel shirt. She sat on the couch with a blanket over her legs and looked at the fire. She realized, with a small shock, that her mind was quiet. Not empty, never empty, but quiet in the way it got sometimes in the middle of a long run when the thoughts stopped competing and just floated.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd sat in a room with a fire and no agenda. When Daniel came back, he sat in the chair Sophie had vacated and picked up a mug of coffee that had been sitting on the side table, presumably since before Riley arrived. "She was out in 40 seconds. " He said. "She's a good kid. She's the best person I know. " He said it without sentimentality, as a statement of observable fact.