Bear dropped to one knee.
"Easy."
"You ripped my blanket off!"
"I need to see that jacket."
"It's not yours!"
Emily was crying now.
People nearby had begun watching.
Someone lifted a phone and started recording.
Bear ignored them.
"Please."
Something in his voice changed.
Emily noticed.
He wasn't angry anymore.
He looked frightened.
Slowly, she released one side of the jacket.
Bear took it carefully.
His hands trembled.
He opened it.
Inside the collar was an old rectangular cloth label.
Someone had written a name in black ink many years earlier.
Most of the letters had faded.
But they were still readable.
HOWARD.
Bear stopped breathing.
Rabbit looked over his shoulder.
His face went white.
"Oh my God."
Emily looked between them.
"What?"
Bear touched the name.
"Where did you get this?"
Emily wiped her face.
"My father."
Bear looked up.
"What was his name?"
She hesitated.
"Howard Carter."
The world beneath the overpass seemed to become silent.
Bear stared at her.
Then he whispered:
"Howie?"
Emily frowned.
"You knew him?"
Bear sat down on the cold pavement.
For the first time in years, Daniel Dawson had no idea what to say.
Because Howard Carter had been more than another member of the Road Saints.
Howard had been Bear's best friend.
And seventeen years earlier, everyone in the club had believed Howard's little daughter had disappeared forever.
Bear remembered Emily Carter as a seven-year-old girl.
She had pigtails.
Missing front teeth.
A laugh loud enough to interrupt an entire motorcycle club meeting.
Howard used to bring her to the clubhouse on Sunday afternoons.
She would sit on the fuel tank of his motorcycle while it was parked and pretend she was riding across America.
"California!" she would shout.
Howard would ask, "Why California?"
"Disneyland!"
"That's not how geography works."
She didn't care.
To Emily, every road eventually reached Disneyland.
Bear remembered buying her ice cream.
He remembered teaching her to throw darts badly.
He remembered Howard threatening to break his fingers after Bear gave her coffee when she was eight.
Then Howard's marriage collapsed.
Emily's mother, Susan, moved away.
There were custody battles.
Arguments.
Lawyers.
Then, one summer, Susan took Emily to another state.
She never returned.
Howard searched.
He hired investigators.
He called police departments.
He drove across three states following rumors.
Nothing.
Eventually, contact disappeared completely.
Howard never recovered.
Seven years later, he died in a motorcycle accident.
The Road Saints buried him wearing his spare club vest.
His original jacket had vanished years earlier.
Now it was lying in Bear's hands beneath a Portland overpass.
And Howard's missing daughter was standing in front of him.
Bear looked at her.
"Your dad called you Emmy."
Emily's face changed.
Nobody had called her that in years.
"He hated when anybody else did."
Bear smiled sadly.
"Yeah."
"He said it was his name for me."
"Exactly."
Emily sat slowly.
"Who are you?"
"Daniel Dawson."
No recognition.
"Everybody calls me Bear."
Still nothing.
He expected that.
"You were little."
Bear pointed toward himself.
"Your dad and I rode together."
Emily stared.
"You really knew him?"
"For twenty-three years."
"How?"
"Motorcycles."
Bear showed her the Road Saints patch on his vest.
"Same club."
Emily looked at the jacket.
Her anger had not disappeared.
But confusion had replaced some of it.
"He never talked about you."
Bear accepted that quietly.
"How old were you when you last saw him?"
"Eleven."
Bear nodded.
That explained a lot.
Howard had died when Emily was seventeen.
But if Susan had completely separated her from him at eleven, Emily might never have known about the years he spent searching.
"When did you get the jacket?"
Emily looked down.
"My mother gave it to me."
"When?"
"When I was sixteen."
"What did she say?"
"She said Dad didn't want me."
Bear's jaw tightened.
Emily continued.
"She said he'd given up."
"No."
The word came so quickly that Emily looked at him.
Bear repeated it.
"No."
"You don't know what happened."
"I know Howard."
"People change."
"He spent years looking for you."
Emily stared.
"No."
"Yes."
"My mother said—"
"Your mother lied."
Emily stood.
"Don't talk about her."
Bear raised his hands.
"Okay."
"She's dead."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
The answer surprised him.
Emily looked toward the road.
"She had problems."
"What kind?"
"Drugs."
Bear remained quiet.
"We moved constantly."
"Why?"
"Sometimes because she owed people money. Sometimes because she got evicted. Sometimes because she had a new boyfriend."
Emily swallowed.
"When I was sixteen, she gave me Dad's jacket."
"Why?"
"She was angry."
Emily looked at the faded name.
"She said, 'Here. If you love him so much, take his garbage.'"
Bear closed his eyes.
"That's how I got it."
"Did she tell you where he was?"
"No."
"Did you try to find him?"
"When I turned eighteen."
Bear's heart sank.
"What happened?"
"I found an obituary."
Silence.
Emily's voice became smaller.
"He'd been dead almost a year."
Bear looked down.
"I'm sorry."
"I thought..."
She stopped.