Bare Metal Heart

Lottie Duvall has rebuilt everything in her life with her own hands — a father's shop, a bay full of tools, a mortgage she is three months behind on. She has never let anyone touch her, and she is twenty-five when that finally changes. The man who changes it is forty-seven, quiet as a shut door, and president of the Vultures of Marrowbone, a club with four members, three wives and one very good accountant. She rebuilds his '79 Shovelhead over one long Louisiana summer and he ruins her for every other man in the parish. Then he goes to federal prison for a brother, and she finds out she's pregnant, and she decides that a man with twenty-six months and nothing to offer doesn't need to know. She writes to him anyway. One page a month, no photographs, nothing he can use in a parole hearing. He writes back part numbers and a list of things he intends to do. On the day he walks out, he comes straight to the shop and puts his hand on the fender and asks after the girl.