“Should we name him?” Jojo asked, eyes wide as the moon.
“Already got a name,” I said. “Emilio.”
Jojo smiled at the baby, then at me, like it was the best thing he’d ever heard. He said it out loud, gentle, and the sound fit the room like a key in a lock. “Emilio.”
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until he said it. Rawley caught the look, but he didn’t say anything.
I was grateful.
We all just sat there for a second, kitchen humming with the low noises of the heater and the faint, rubbery squeak of the crib mattress as Emilio squirmed.
In that moment, it felt like the house had always contained us, always known how to shape itself around whatever new disaster rolled in through the door.
Rawley broke the spell. “What’s the plan for today, Hoop?”
I grinned. “I was going to drink coffee and die, but now I’ll change the oil in the flatbed and then see if Emilio needs a new alternator. Kid’s got a strong starter motor, but I think he’s running a little lean.”
Jojo stifled a giggle and Rawley just shook his head, but I could see the tension leak out of his shoulders, a little.
I finished my coffee, scraped the chair back, and stood. “Gonna be in the barn,” I said, grabbing my jacket from the hook. I hesitated, just a second, before picking Emilio up. “If you need me, just holler. I’m on baby duty.”
Jojo beamed, Rawley grunted, and Emilio, for once, didn’t make a sound.
The air outside bit harder than I expected. I stood on the porch for a second, letting the cold eat at the last of my sleep. The windows behind me glowed with the promise of heat and coffee, and in the pale blue light of morning, the house looked less like a disaster and more like a map—lines and windows and rooms, each one filled with the strange and fragile hope that maybe this time, we wouldn’t fuck it up.
I pulled the door shut behind me and headed for the barn, the sound of Jojo’s pencil already fading into the rhythm of the waking day.
The barn in winter was a church: all cold breath and echo, the long confession of steel on concrete. Even the daylight kept its voice down, filtering through the high windows in thin strips that made everything underneath look like a diorama built for no one’s pleasure but mine.
I got the hood up on the flatbed before breakfast, the old 454 block half-gutted and leaking the last of last season’s optimism onto a pile of rags. Emilio watched me from a bouncy seat—Rawley’s idea of childcare, I guessed—secured to the floor with a ratchet strap and a sense of fatalism.
I’d folded a moving blanket under it, mostly for insulation, but also because the idea of his head smacking into the bare concrete, even at zero miles an hour, made me itch. Two feet from the grill, he sat there like a tiny, unimpressed foreman, judging my every move.
The barn stank of old grease and something fainter, sweeter, maybe the memory of livestock or maybe just the ghosts of ten thousand spilled gallons of gasoline. Emilio’s powder-and-milk scent barely registered, but when I stopped moving, I could find it—soft, persistent, a molecule of something like hope.
I worked the way I always did when my brain needed boxing out: hard, fast, and just this side of reckless. Socket wrench, socket, socket, try again. Rinse the hands in brake cleaner, wipe on the jeans, repeat.
I sang to myself under my breath, the way I always had, mostly to keep the voices in my head from harmonizing. Emilio followed the sound, big blue eyes locked on my face, like he was cataloging every lyric for future blackmail.
“You wanna see a trick, kid?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
He gurgled, which I took as consent.
I twisted the tensioner arm with a length of pipe and popped the serpentine belt off in one move, letting it slap to the floor like a dead snake. I held up my arms in triumph.
“Ten points,” I said.
Emilio’s face didn’t change.
There was a thud at the barn door, then a slow swing and the unmistakable tread of Decker, boots soled with patience and a half-inch of stubborn. He let the door slam behind him, stood inside the threshold, and took in the scene without a word.
He walked the length of the barn without hurry, every step measured, like he was counting the boards underfoot. He stopped next to Emilio, crouched, and scanned him top to toe with the deliberate care of a guy who’d learned early that most emergencies came disguised as nothings.
“Color’s good,” he said, thumb brushing the kid’s cheek, eyes never leaving his face. “Temp’s fine. Did he feed this morning?”
“Formula at seven. Six ounces. I think. I was asleep for most of it.”
Decker grunted. “You get any sleep?”
