Page 29 of My Older Biker

"What do you want to say?"

"Something that matters. Something that—" I stop. Run my hand over my face. "I don't know. Something that makes it mean something."

She's quiet. Her thumb moves in a small circle against my shoulder blade.

"Did you know him well?" she asks after a moment.

"Not well enough." The words come out rough. "He was quiet. Kept to himself. You could sit with Perry for two hours and he'd say maybe ten words. But they'd be the right ten words, you know? He thought before he spoke. Didn't waste air on bullshit."

"What else?"

"He liked westerns. The old ones. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood. He had this whole collection of VHS tapes at his apartment. I went over there once to help him fix his truck and he had them lined up on a shelf alphabetically. Must've been fifty of them." I pick the pen back up. Set it down again. "He had a sister in Pennsylvania. Older sister. She called him every Sunday at four o'clock. He always answered. Didn't matter what he was doing. Didn't matter if we were at the clubhouse or on a run. Four o'clock on Sunday his phone would ring and he'd step outside to take it."

Zoe doesn't say anything. Just keeps that steady presence.

"He did good work," I continue. "In the garage. With his hands. Patient work. The kind where you don't rush the job because rushing makes mistakes. He could take apart an engine and put it back together and it'd run better than it did before. He never complained. Never asked for anything he hadn't earned."

"He sounds like a good person."

"Yeah. He was." My throat gets tight. "And I didn't know his favorite meal. Didn't know what he did on Sunday afternoons after his sister's call. Didn't know if there was someone he wanted but never told anyone about. I knew him for eight years and I didn't know him at all."

The admission sits there like something physical.

Zoe moves around the chair. Sinks down onto the floor in front of me. Her knees pull up to her chest and she wraps her arms around them. Looking up at me in the harsh kitchen light.

"You can't know everything about someone," she says.

"I should've tried harder."

"Maybe. But you can't fix that now."

"I know." I lean back in the chair. It creaks under my weight. "Chuck found him at five in the morning. Perry'd been dead for probably two hours by then. Just lying there in his apartment parking lot. Three rounds center mass. Execution style."

Zoe's face does something complicated.

"Marrow left a playing card," I say. "Their calling card from back when they wanted credit. They wanted us to know it was them. Wanted us to know they could reach us when we were alone."

"That's why Dad moved me to your place."

"Yeah."

She's quiet for a long moment. Then, "What are you really trying to write?"

I look at the notebook. At all the failed attempts. "I'm trying to say something that makes his death matter. That gives it meaning. But everything I write sounds like funeral bullshit. He was a good man. He served the club well. He'll be missed. None of it means anything."

"So don't write that."

"What should I write?"

"I don't know. The truth maybe."

I almost laugh but it comes out wrong. "The truth is he died alone at three in the morning and nobody noticed he was gone until Chuck did a routine check two hours later. The truth is we failed him. The club failed him. He gave eight years and died by himself in a parking lot."

"Is that what scares you?"

The question catches me off guard. "What?"

"Dying alone. Is that what you're actually afraid of?"