Noah didn’t look up. He yanked on the wrench, his knuckles scraping against the metal housing with a sharp scrape. He didn’t even flinch.
“We don’t know that for sure,” he said, his voice echoing under the hood.
“Think about it,” I said, tapping my index finger on my knee. “The zero balance on Josh’s bank slip. Grandma Ruth crying in her garden. It all fits.”
Noah stopped turning the wrench. He stood up straight, wiping his greasy hands on a red shop rag.
“Josh bought us those blue ten-speed bicycles for our twelfth birthday,” Noah said, staring at the bare bulb above us. “He told us he worked thirty hours of overtime at the foundry to pay for them.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Why would he do that if there was sixty or seventy thousand dollars sitting in a bank account for us?” Noah asked, his voice cracking slightly. “He wouldn’t have lied to us about that.”
