My hand slips. The screwdriver gouges across the soft aluminum casing, leaving a bright, jagged scratch.
"Dammit," I mutter, dropping the tool.
I stare at the scratch. It's sloppy, amateur work.
I take a breath.Focus, Nash. It's just a carburetor. It's a machine.
I pick up the screwdriver again. I get the screws out. I pop the bowl off. The smell of old gasoline wafts up, sharp and acrid.
Inside, the float is stuck. The needle valve is gummed up with varnish.
"There you are," I whisper. "Simple."
I reach for the can of solvent to clean it. But as I spray the jet, the hiss of the aerosol can sounds exactly like the static of a radio.
I lost the sled in the river. We climbed our way out. Evolve with me.
Her voice is in my head, louder than the fan heater buzzing in the corner. I look at the workbench. Specifically, I look at the empty spot to my left.
A week ago she was holding the antenna wire for me while I soldered, her fingers shaking, her focus absolute. She'd smelled like woodsmoke and the tent. Now there's just dust.
Now there's just dust.
I drop the carburetor part onto the bench. It lands with a hollow clatter.
I can't do this.
I lean forward, bracing my hands on the edge of the workbench, hanging my head.
This is what Dad felt. When Mom died, I thought Dad was weak for falling apart, that he lacked discipline. I thought he just needed to find a task and stick to it. I thought sitting in the house with her ghost was the problem, not the staying.
But you can't fix a vacuum with a wrench. You can't torque-wrench your way out of silence.
I look at the boots again.
They're empty, just shells of leather and rubber. But they're a promise. Nobody leaves their Sorels.
I grab a rag and wipe the grease off my hands. I'm not going to rebuild the carburetor today. I'm not going to fix the generator. If I try, I'm going to break something expensive.
I walk over to the small, grimy window that looks out over the meadow. The sky is fully bright now, a hard, unforgiving blue. The plane is long gone. She's probably halfway to Fairbanks by now, staring out the window at the endless white, thinking about tenure and board meetings and beige walls.
I wonder if she's eating a salad. I wonder if she misses the steak.
I pull my phone out of my pocket. No signal reaches the shed. I'd have to go up to the house.
But I don't go. I just stand there, holding the phone like a talisman, waiting for the satellite to align, waiting for the worldto spin, waiting for the digital ping that tells me she hasn't forgotten the coordinates of home.
Work helps, Finn had said.
Finn is an idiot. Work doesn't help. It just passes the time. And right now, time feels like the enemy.
I put the phone back in my pocket. I pick up the carburetor parts and organize them neatly on a shop towel. I might not be able to fix it today, but I won't leave a mess. That's the difference between me and Dad. I don't let the chaos win.
But then I think about the spare room at Misty Meadows. The one that's held Granddad's gear since he died—boxes of his tools, a busted feed scale, a plastic bin of hardware I keep meaning to sort.
She'll need a workspace. Somewhere to set up her monitors, her data drives, the research she's been rebuilding for three years. Somewhere with good light and room for two screens and quiet you can only get ninety miles from pavement.
I don't know if she's coming back. I genuinely don't know.
