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“Your clutch cable’s fraying. Chain’s got tight spots. And whoever last adjusted this rear brake needs their hands taken away.”

I stare at him.

Wayne looks back at me.

“Was it you?” he asks.

“No.”

Fletcher grins. “That means yes.”

“It means no.”

Rex’s mouth twitches. “With Briggs, no usually means he did it but doesn’t want commentary.”

“I don’t want commentary when I didn’t do it either.”

“That’s fair,” Rex says.

Wayne drops the rag on the bench. “I’ll fix it.”

“Today?”

He gives me that mechanic look. The one that says customers are a curse the lord invented because fire ants weren’t annoying enough. “You want it done right or done right now?”

“Yes.”

Fletcher points his burrito at me. “See, that’s why people think you’re difficult.”

“People think I’m difficult because I am.”

“Yeah,” Wayne chips in. “That’s why people cross the street to avoid you.”

Rex chuckles.

I look at all three of them until they go back to pretending not to be entertained.

That’s the problem with small town folk becoming family. They get comfortable with your teeth.

Last Mile Garage sits just off the river road, where the trees come close enough to drip on the roof and the river makes noise when everything else goes quiet. The place was Wayne’s before it became half clubhouse, half repair shop, half unofficial rescue station for every busted engine and busted person within fifty miles.

Yes, that’s three halves.

Wayne built the place. Fletcher made it loud. Rex made it homely.

June made it softer.

There are toys stacked in one corner now. Wooden animals, painted blocks, little trucks with smooth wheels. June’s work. Their son Evan’s jacket hangs off the back of Wayne’s office chair. Garish crayon drawings, presumably done by their twins, Lily and Noah, are taped to the side of a filing cabinet. One shows three stick figure men, one woman with short dark hair, and two tiny shapes that are either babies or potatoes.

The whole place changed after June.

Wayne smiles more, which was unsettling for the first few months. On the other hand, Fletcher’s become somehow more obnoxious and more useful, while Rex is a man who’s finally stopped watching the horizon for a place to run.

Good for them.

Marlowe Jensen comes out of Wayne’s office carrying a clipboard, a red pen tucked behind one ear and her dark braid falling over the shoulder of a canvas jacket. She’s Mars to most of us, though I don’t use nicknames unless a person earns one or makes the mistake of telling me they hate it.

She’s got a heart soft as fresh bread and a filing system organized like a military operation.