Chapter 2 - THE NAME BENEATH THE RUST
Upstairs, Leo sat in a waiting area with his knees drawn against his chest.
Richard took the chair beside him without introducing himself.
For several long minutes, neither spoke.
Then Richard asked, “Was that your bicycle?”
“My grandpa’s.”
“You loved it.”
Leo nodded. “But I love my mom more.”
Richard looked away.
The nurse arrived a minute later.
“Leo,” she said gently, “your mother’s surgery has been approved. They’re preparing her now.”
Leo frowned. “But I didn’t have enough.”
“Someone covered it.”
His eyes moved slowly to Richard.
“Was it you?”
Richard knelt in front of him. “Yes.”
Leo’s chin trembled. “Why?”
“Because no child should have to sell the last thing his grandfather gave him just to keep his mother alive.”
That was when Leo finally cried.
Richard stayed beside him while the surgical doors closed and hospital staff wheeled Diane away.
About an hour later, Richard’s driver returned, pushing the faded red bicycle through the lobby.
“I had to pay the dealer five times what he gave the boy,” the driver muttered. “But I got it.”
Leo jumped to his feet.
Richard reached for the frame, intending to hand it back.
Then his fingers brushed something under the rusted crossbar.
A thin brass plate.
He wiped it clean with his sleeve.
Two names emerged under the hospital lights:
THOMAS MERCER & RICHARD HALE — FIRST PAYCHECK, 1989
The color drained from Richard’s face.
Leo looked from the plate to the millionaire kneeling beside the bicycle.
“Why is your name on Grandpa’s bike?”
Richard did not answer immediately.
Because in one stunned instant the lobby disappeared, and he was nineteen again—sweating in a loading yard, laughing beside a wiry young man with grease on his hands and big plans in his head.
Thomas Mercer.
His best friend.
His first business partner.
The man he had believed abandoned him thirty years earlier.
Richard swallowed hard.
“Because,” he said quietly, still staring at the plate, “your grandfather and I bought this bicycle together.”
Leo blinked. “You knew him?”
May you like
Richard looked at the boy’s face—at the eyes that suddenly made sense.
“I thought I did.”
