The afternoon Ava visited, I was more nervous than I wanted anyone to know.
I had spent the morning working with tools.
That usually helped.
There was something comfortable about a job where a problem could be seen, tested, and eventually fixed.
But every time I heard a vehicle outside, I looked toward the entrance.
I knew Mrs. Hanley was bringing Ava.
A caseworker would be there as well.
Everything had been arranged properly.
Still, I felt like a man waiting for a judgment he didn't know how to prepare for.
When Ava arrived, she looked around with open curiosity.
I had expected her to be uncomfortable.
Maybe even frightened.
The place was full of heavy equipment and motorcycles.
To a child who didn't know it, I supposed it might seem intimidating.
But she didn't shrink away.
She wanted to see things.
I greeted Mrs. Hanley and the caseworker first.
Then I turned to Ava.
"Would you like to look around?"
She nodded.
"Can you show me the motorcycles?"
"Sure."
That was how we started.
No big speech.
No awkward discussion about what we might be to each other.
Just a walk through my workplace.
I showed her the parts counter.
She stopped to examine the little drawers behind it.
Each one had a label.
Small parts belonged in small places, and the labels kept us from wasting half a day looking for things.
Ava traced the edge of one drawer with her finger.
"Are all these full?"
"Most of them."
"How do you remember what's inside?"
"I don't have to remember every part. That's why I put names on things."
She gave me a look.
I realized she had expected a more impressive answer.
I almost laughed.
Then we went over to the lift.
I explained how it raised a motorcycle so we could work underneath without bending over all day.
She studied it carefully.
"Does it lift the whole thing?"
"It does."
"Even a really heavy one?"
"That's what it's made for."
She took another look.
I could see the questions building in her head.
It made me happy.
That surprised me.
I had never thought of my work as something a child might find interesting.
To me, it was just what I did.
Ava made it seem new again.
When we reached the old training motorcycle, she stopped walking.
The fuel tank was red.
That was the first thing she noticed.
"Is this one yours?"
"It's one we use for learning and practice."
"Did you make it?"
"No. I work on motorcycles, but that doesn't mean I made them."
She looked across the shop.
"Did you make any of them?"
"I mostly repair them."
She thought that over.
I could almost see her trying to decide whether repairing something was as impressive as building it.
Then she asked a question I wasn't ready for.
"If you can fix something, do you have to know how it got damaged?"
I looked at her.
She wasn't joking.
She genuinely wanted to understand.
"Not always," I said.
She waited.
I could have stopped there.
But the question deserved more than that.
"Sometimes I have to look for the problem before I know what happened. Other times, I can see exactly where things went wrong."
She nodded slowly.
I kept looking at the red tank.
For a moment, we weren't talking about motorcycles anymore.
At least, I wasn't.
I thought about Mara.
About years without answers.
About a daughter I might have had and never known.
There was damage I could see plainly now.
But I still didn't know what had caused all of it.
Ava moved toward the drawers again.
"Mom knows how to fix bicycle chains."
I turned toward her.
"She does?"
"Yeah. She only needs a wrench."
That made sense.
It sounded exactly like Mara.
Ava continued.
"She says a lot of things when it doesn't work, though."
Mrs. Hanley raised her eyebrows.
Ava smiled a little.
"Things I'm not supposed to repeat."
I couldn't help it.
I laughed.
Not a polite laugh.
Not the kind I used when somebody told a bad joke.
I laughed because I could picture Mara doing exactly that.
Standing beside a bicycle.
Wrench in her hand.
Refusing to let a stubborn chain win.
For a few seconds, the fear around her disappearance loosened.
It was the first time since the diner that laughing hadn't made me feel as though I was doing something wrong.
Then I noticed Ava watching me.
"She did that before?" she asked.
"Your mom has always been good at fixing things."
Ava seemed pleased.
As if I had confirmed something important.
Maybe I had.
Children deserved to hear good things about their parents.
Especially when one of those parents was missing.
We stayed in the shop a little longer.
Ava asked how long repairs usually took.
I told her it depended on what was broken.
She wanted to know whether people got angry when their motorcycles didn't work.
"Sometimes."
"Do they blame you?"
"Sometimes they do that, too."
"Even when you didn't break it?"
"Especially then."
She considered that answer.
"That's not fair."
"No, it isn't."
I liked how certain she sounded.
She hadn't learned to make excuses for every unfair thing yet.
I hoped she never did.
After we finished looking around, we found a quieter place to talk.
Mrs. Hanley and the caseworker were still nearby.
Nobody made the afternoon feel like a test, even though I knew they were paying attention.
Ava told me a little about school.
I asked what she liked reading.
She had opinions.
Strong ones.
I listened and tried not to act surprised by how much she had to say.
Eventually, she mentioned a telescope.
It was a small one she had bought secondhand at a yard sale.
She talked about it as if it were the finest piece of equipment in the world.
"You can really see things with it?"
"Some things."
"What do you look for?"
"Stars, mostly."
"Do you want to learn more about them?"
She nodded.
"I want to study astronomy."
I hadn't expected that.
At eleven, I had been mostly interested in anything that had wheels.
I couldn't remember spending much time looking at the sky.
"Why astronomy?"
She looked down for a moment.
Then she said something that stayed with me.
"Stars don't tell you stuff that turns out to be wrong."
I didn't answer right away.
I could hear what was underneath those words.
Ava was a child who had discovered that adults didn't always tell her everything.
Sometimes they couldn't.
Sometimes they wouldn't.
And sometimes they made promises without knowing whether they could keep them.
I wondered how many disappointments had brought her to that conclusion.
I didn't ask.
Not then.
I just said, "I guess the sky gives you something steady to study."
She nodded.
That seemed to satisfy her.
A little later, I remembered a photograph I had kept.
It showed Mara and me at a county fair.
I hadn't looked at it much in recent years.
Keeping it had been easier than deciding what to do with it.
I got it and brought it over.
"There's something I'd like to show you."
Ava leaned closer.
I placed the photograph where she could see it.
For a moment, she didn't speak.
She studied Mara's face.
Then mine.
Then Mara's again.
I didn't tell her what to think.
I didn't explain what our relationship had been.
I just waited.
"Mom looks really happy here," she said.
"She was."
The answer came out before I thought about it.
Then I heard myself.
Was.
Past tense.
As if her happiness belonged to a life that had already ended.
I felt ashamed of that.
Mara was missing.
She had not been declared dead.
We were still looking for her.
I had no right to speak as if I knew the ending.
Ava kept looking at the photograph.
"Did you have fun?"
"Yeah. We did."
"What was the fair like?"
I told her a little about it.
Nothing dramatic.
Just the sort of ordinary afternoon people rarely understand will become important to them later.
A photograph.
A day together.
Two people smiling because there hadn't been a reason not to.
Ava listened.
I wondered whether she was trying to understand what Mara and I had meant to each other.
Maybe she was.
Maybe she only wanted to hear about her mother having a good day.
Either way, I was glad I had shown it to her.
When she finally handed the photograph back, she was careful with it.
I put it away.
I didn't want her to think the past mattered more to me than the person sitting in front of me.
But I was grateful she'd seen it.
Mrs. Hanley spoke with the caseworker as the visit went on.
I tried not to watch them too closely.
It was their responsibility to make sure Ava was safe and comfortable.
I respected that.
I also knew they were learning something about me.
Whether I listened.
Whether I got impatient.
Whether I treated Ava like a person or like an answer to my own questions.
That was fair.
If I was going to be part of her life, there were things I needed to prove.
Not with speeches.
With time.
At the end of the afternoon, Ava looked around the shop once more.
Her eyes returned to the red motorcycle.
"Could you teach me how that works someday?"
I felt my throat tighten.
It was such a simple question.
Someday.
A word that assumed we might have more afternoons together.
"I'd like that," I told her.
She smiled.
And I realized I had spent most of the visit forgetting to be nervous.
After they left, the shop seemed unusually quiet.
I went back to the training bike and looked at the red tank.
I had shown Ava tools, parts, and machines.
She had shown me something harder.
There was still room in my life for someone new.
Someone I had not expected.
And the next step wasn't mine to decide alone.
There would be a formal test to determine whether Ava was my biological daughter.
No guesses.
No conclusions drawn from memories or familiar expressions.
A proper answer.
For the first time, I was ready to hear it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: While We Waited for the Paternity Results, I Learned the Small Things About Ava That Made the Biggest Difference to Me
I Had Spent Years Trying to Forget Mara, Until Her Eleven-Year-Old Daughter Walked Into My Life and Made That Impossible
Part 2 of 12
