She said again connection was there. It just needed someone to draw it. Cole stood up. He looked at Danny. Danny spread his hands in a gesture that communicated something like, "Well, I know the repair on Pete's Sportster took four hours."
Not because the fix was complicated. Splicing a broken wire inside a harness is painstaking, but not complex, but because Haley didn't stop at the one break. Once she had the harness open at the stress point, she ran a full continuity check on every adjacent section. Because in her experience, a harness that had taken stress damage in one place often had micro fractures developing in nearby sections that hadn't failed yet, but would. She fixed all three.
She documented every splice. She took photos with her phone, her own phone, not because anyone asked, but because she documented everything, every repair, finding every piece of work she did. Ray Kowalsski had come in at some point during the morning and was working on something else in the back bay. Over twice to watch her work on the harness. He didn't say much.
He had the quality of someone listening to a piece of music they recognized but were hearing played by someone whose interpretation kept revealing things they hadn't noticed in the original. When she finished and they tested the bike a full bench test. Then a short run around the back lot, the power held clean. No drops, no interruptions. Danny was the one who rode it around the lot.
Came back with an expression that was not quite disbelief, but was close to it. 14 months, he said. Yeah. Haley said over a year if he stopped it again. And it was a piece of wire.
It was a piece of wire in exactly the right place to be almost impossible to find unless you came at it from the right direction, she said. Well, there's no shame in missing it. Pete is going to Dany laughed. Exhale of something that had been held in too long. Is going to lose his mind in a good way.
Hope, Haley said in the best possible way, Danny said had been watching from the garage entrance. He walked over now and he looked at the sportster and then he looked at Haley and he said, 'What do you charge for 4 hours? 60 an hour, she said. That's too low, he said. That's my rate.
Not anymore, he said. You're billing 90. She looked at him. I'm not going to argue with you about paying you what your work is worth. Cole said argue about a lot of things, not that.
She held his gaze for a moment. There was something in that moment that wasn't quite stubbornness on either side. More like two people who were used to being the most principled person in their respective rooms discovering that the other one was also that person. She said finally. Plus parts.
Plus parts. Good. Cole said Garrett's bike is next. The transmission problem on Garrett's touring bike turned out to be the detent spring as Haley had suspected from reading his note. It was a smaller job, an hour and a half.
The time she spent verifying her diagnosis before she committed to it. And she knocked it out in the afternoon while while Dany watched and occasionally handed her things and ask questions that she answered without condescension. As itself something he noticed, most people who were very good at something had one of two modes. When someone less experienced asked them about it or went into lecture mode where the answer was technically complete but delivered in a way that reminded you of your ignorance or they abbreviated the answer in a way that left you knowing less than you'd started with. They didn't either.
She answered Danny's questions the way someone answers who is genuinely interested in making sure the other person understands not in demonstrating that they themselves understand. Midafter afternoon, the garage had a different quality to it, dramatically different. The music still played, their work still happened. But there was a new thread running through thread everything of this woman working in the bay who haders in a single day solved two problems that had been sitting unanswered for a combined total of about 15 months. The quiet veteran member said to Cole at some point during the afternoon.
Oh, she's the real thing. I know. Cole said. Where'd she come from? She's been here.
Cole said shop on Fairfield Road. Her father's place. Hatch considered this. Miss Morgan's girl. You know him?
I know his reputation. Hatch said old school did good work. He paused. But I heard he was sick. He is.
Cole said. Hatch looked at Haley across the bay. She's been running that place alone, he said. Looks like Hatch uncrossed his arms. He recrossed them.
He was working something out in his expression. The particular internal recalibration of some someone connecting facts that individually meant one thing, but together meant something larger. She's got trouble. He said it wasn't a question. Got something.
Cole said. At 4:30, they packed up her tools. She had been in the garage for 7 and 1/2 hours. She had solved two problems and fixed three separate faults. She had answered every question directed at her.
She had cleaned her workspace completely. Not a prefuncter clean, the real kind, because she was the kind of person who left a workspace better than she found it. As quiet as she packed, not the quiet of someone who was tired, though she was tired, of someone whose head was in two places at once. And was managing the split with precision. Ry came over while she was packing.
"You're coming back," he said. "Not quite a question. If you want me to," she said. "Aren't you two?" He said simply.