"I never asked her what it was like," Grandpa said. "To be the one who said okay. I figured she was fine. She was always fine." He picked his coffee back up. He didn't drink it. "Took me about thirty years to figure out that fine was just the noise she made so I'd leave her alone."
The heater ticked.
"Your mother's been running herself into the ground for that boy since October," Grandpa said. "And she knows she's been doing it to you. Knows it better than anybody alive, 'cause it was done to her, by me. And it's eating her up. I know it is. I can see it from here." He set the mug down again. "And your brother, he's been out here every Saturday, sorting my screws, trying to buy his way back into your good graces with a box from Best Buy, 'cause he's eleven years old and that's the only way he could figure to do it. And you." He pointed at Caleb, the big finger. "You've been sitting up in your room deciding which one of them loves you less."
It landed. It landed the way the truth does, in the stomach first.
"That's not fair," Caleb said, but there wasn't any force in it.
"Nope," said Grandpa Walt. "Fair's for the county fair." He stood up, slowly, knees negotiating. He picked a bin off the shelf — 3/8 LOCK WASHER — and set it on the workbench. "Now. I got a Briggs and Stratton in here that won't hold an idle, and I can't get the carburetor off, 'cause I can't see worth a damn anymore and my fingers are too big. You still got small fingers?"
Caleb looked at his hands.
"Yeah," he said.
"Then get over here."
They worked till two. Grandpa didn't say anything else about any of it, and Caleb didn't ask. At one point Caleb needed a #8 machine screw and went to the back wall and found it in four seconds, under the label in Jordan's handwriting, and he stood there for a minute with it in his palm, the little cold weight of it, before he came back to the bench.
* * *
Grandpa dropped him off at two-thirty and honked once, short this time, which in Grandpa's language was practically a hug. Mom's car was in the driveway. The house was quiet. Caleb stood in the front hall with grease in the lines of his knuckles, black, the same as Jordan's every Saturday since January, and he looked at it, and then he went upstairs and knocked on Jordan's door.
"What," said Jordan, through it.