And watching him ride, I understood that I had been half right and wholly wrong.

The loss had marked him, yes; a boy does not lose his father at ten and remain untouched.

But it had not deformed him.

It had, if anything, revealed him, revealed a depth of loyalty and courage and love that most people go their whole lives without being asked to show.

Mark had died, but Mark was not gone, not entirely, because the very best of him, the part that would have done anything for his family, had not died at all.

It had passed into his son, and lived there, and had just spent six months working itself raw in a diner to save the house its owner had built.