You are.

Casey stopped.

Walter turned away, giving her privacy.

She read on.

I have watched you take apart radios, bicycles, lawn mowers, and everything else Eleanor begged you not to touch.

You have the hands, kiddo.

More importantly, you have the part no teacher can give you.

You stop when someone needs help.

Her vision blurred.

Then she reached the final paragraph.

And everything changed.

The Panhead does not belong to Walter.

It does not belong to the company.

It belongs to you.

Casey looked up.

Walter was smiling.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No way.”

Walter lifted the white cloth.

The cherry-red motorcycle gleamed beneath the workshop lights.

Casey stared.

Walter continued quietly.

“Frank transferred his ownership of the prototype to a trust seventeen years ago.”

“The year he died.”

“Three weeks before.”

Casey could barely speak.

“You knew?”

“Not until we opened the cylinder.”

“But why did he hide the papers in the bike?”

Walter looked toward the old photographs.

“Because Henry searched houses.”

His eyes met hers.

“Frank knew nobody would search inside the machine everyone thought belonged to me.”

Casey touched the seat.

The motorcycle she had admired in a library book since she was fourteen.

The machine she had dreamed of building something like.

The motorcycle six men had nearly stolen.

The bike she had risked her life to protect.

It had been hers.

All along.

Walter held out the key.

Casey did not take it immediately.

“There’s more,” he said.

She laughed weakly.

“Of course there is.”

Walter handed her a second document.

Casey read it.

Then read it again.

“What is this?”

“Your grandfather’s controlling-interest agreement.”

“I already know about the fifty-one percent.”

Walter shook his head.

“This isn’t the old company.”

Casey looked down.

The document had been executed seventeen years earlier.

Shortly before Frank’s death.

Walter explained.

After discovering some of Henry Garrison’s fraud, Frank had quietly contacted an attorney.

He did not believe he would ever recover his stolen shares.

So he created something else.

A contractual claim.

If the original ownership fraud was ever proven, Frank’s controlling interest would pass into a trust.

Not to Eleanor.

Not to Frank’s daughter.

To one person.

Casey.

She stared at the final line.

BENEFICIARY AND SUCCESSOR: CASEY ELEANOR MARLOWE.

“No.”

Walter smiled.

“Afraid so.”

“I’m a mechanic.”

“So was Frank.”

“I have forty-one dollars.”

“You had forty-one dollars.”

Casey stared at him.

Walter laughed.

“The lawyers are still calculating six decades of licensing, royalties, and equity.”

“How much?”

“They stopped giving me estimates after eight figures.”

Casey sat down.

Hard.

Walter waited.

Finally she looked at him.

“So yesterday I couldn’t pay Grandma’s hospital bill.”