Page 16 of Last Track

"When's he coming back?" she asked, without preamble.

"The run ends in Bristol. Ten days."

"Ten days isn't an answer."

Martin had no answer for her. Hazel passed with a basket of washing and said she'd leave the spare-room bed made, then went on toward the farmhouse. The fence post remained no better inspected than before.

Peter rang Friday morning with the news Martin had been simultaneously hoping for and dreading in equal, uncomfortable measure. The valve had gone in clean, nothing else had surfaced, and the bill matched the estimate they'd already braced for. Nina was ready to collect.

Martin felt the two things at once: relief that Galen's independence was restored, and dread because the last practical reason for him to remain had vanished. Nina had needed to be fixed so Galen could choose freely. Martin had simply never asked what the choice might be.

He drove Galen to Peter's in Jacks's Land Rover, and the journey was outwardly easy, Galen restless with anticipation in the passenger seat, checking his phone, running through the list of what the run would need. Martin asked practical questions because practical questions were the only ones he trusted himself with. What had Peter replaced. How far Galen meant to drive the first day. Whether Ferras knew Nina was fit again. Whether he'd checked the oil before setting off tomorrow.

Galen answered each one, then waited, plainly, for something else.

Martin gave him nothing else.

Nina started on the second try, coughed once, and then settled into a clean, steady idle that made Peter nod with the satisfaction of a man whose reputation had just been proved. Galen's whole face changed, relief breaking over it openly in a way Martin hadn't seen from him even at the pub, and Martin was glad for him, genuinely, entirely, in the specific way that made his chest ache at the same time.

"Bring her back after the run," Peter said, taking payment. "Just so I can hear her properly under load."

Galen drove Nina back to Ashcombe himself, Martin following in the Land Rover. She had arrived disabled behind Jacks's bumper and now ran cleanly under her own power. Galen could have driven straight toward the run; he chose to return to Ashcombe first, and Martin let the fact reassure him.

They packed that evening, moving between the farmhouse and the cottage in a slow, quiet reversal of everything the last weeks had built. Clothes came out of the spare room. A charger came out of the cottage kitchen socket. Galen's water glass went back into the cupboard where it had briefly stopped belonging to anyone in particular. A pencil Martin had lent him for marking fingerings went into an outer pocket of the guitar case, and Martin noticed, with a small, private ache, that Galen tucked it away rather than handing it back, as though returning it were somehow worse than keeping it. One toothbrush stayed behind in the bathroom cup at the farmhouse, forgotten or deliberately left, Martin couldn't tell which and didn't ask. Martin helped because helping was the only language he trusted, folding a jumper he had no business folding, carrying a bag he didn't need to carry.

Neither of them said anything that mattered.

By Saturday morning, the bags were loaded and every remaining task had become an excuse to delay the same inevitable minute.

Galen crossed to the corner by the stove last and lifted the guitar case from the space Martin had cleared for it.

"You'll need that," Martin said.

"Apparently."

The word carried more than its size should have allowed. The corner looked wrong immediately, too empty for how little the case had actually occupied it.

Martin busied himself with the practical instead. He packed food for the first day's drive, checked Nina's oil himself though Peter had already done it, wrote out directions that avoided the bad stretch past Kettlebridge, and let Hazel press a blanket on Galen that neither of them thought he'd need, all of it saying, as clearly as Martin knew how to say anything, I want you to arrive safely. None of it said the other thing.

Galen grew quieter with every item Martin handed him, until there was nothing left to pack and no further excuse to delay.

"Anything else?" Galen asked.

Martin looked over the van, the guitar, the bags, running through the list in his head. "You've got everything."

"Right."

"You make leaving very easy," Galen said, quiet, not quite an accusation and not quite anything less than one.

"What was I meant to do? Ask you to turn down good work?"

"That isn't what I asked."

Jacks's question came back to him. Martin had failed the same test twice.

"You never asked me anything," Martin said.

"You never gave me a reason to think I could."