Most evenings, Austin vanished into the garage. He was working on an old motorcycle out there. It did not run, and had not run since before his father died.

I had told him it was a junker from an uncle, though recently he had stopped repeating that explanation back to me, and I had stopped giving it.

Footsteps on the stairs brought me back.

I turned, and there he was, my boy dressed in a charcoal suit, his tie slightly crooked.

“Well?” he asked, holding out his arms.

“Come here. Your boutonniere is fighting you. And your tie.”

“Jamie tried to fix it after school,” he said, glancing down. “Apparently neither of us can knot a Windsor.”

“Jamie,” I repeated, smiling because he was smiling.

The name moved past me like countless other names from countless other afternoons.

“A friend,” Austin said, and shrugged.

He came closer and let me pin the flower. Austin smelled like his father’s old cologne, the bottle I had left on the dresser and never touched again.

“You clean up all right, kid.”