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“Some. But more often, I found bikers helping broken-down motorists. Bikers raising money for cancer kids. Bikers protecting abuse victims. It didn’t fit the story I’d been told.”
“Sarah—” I reached across the table, stopped. “Can I… can I touch your hand? Just to know you’re real?”
She reached out slowly. Our hands met—mine weathered and scarred from decades of searching, hers strong and steady. The moment our skin touched, she gasped.
“I remember,” she whispered. “Oh God, I remember. You used to trace letters on my palm before bed. The alphabet. You said it would make me smart.”
“You learned your letters before you could properly walk.”
“There was a song. Something about wheels?”
“‘Wheels on the Bike.’ I changed the words to the bus song. You made me sing it every night.”
She was sobbing now, this tough cop, my lost daughter. “The calls. There were calls, when I was young. Linda would hang up. Say they were telemarketers.”
“I never stopped trying. Even when the numbers changed, I kept trying.”
“Thirty-one years?”
“Thirty-one years, two months, and sixteen days.”
“You counted?”
“Every single one.”
The desk sergeant knocked. “Chen, everything okay in there?”
Sarah wiped her face. “I need a minute, Tom.”
“The guy’s prints came back clean. Just some old bar stuff. You pressing charges?”
She looked at me. “No. No charges. Misunderstanding.”
After he left, we sat in silence for a moment.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said. “You’re a stranger, but you’re not. You’re my father, but Richard raised me. You’re a biker, and I’m a cop.”
“We go slow,” I said. “Coffee first. Maybe lunch. You can bring your boys if you want. Or not. Your choice. Everything is your choice.”
“My husband’s going to freak out.”
“He can come too. I’ll answer any questions.”
“My parents—the Chens—they’re good people. They just…”
“They loved you. They raised you. I’m grateful for that, even if they kept you from me. You turned out amazing. That’s what matters.”
She stood up, helped me to my feet. “Your bike’s still on Highway 49.”
“My brothers will get it.”
“Brothers?”
“The Sacred Riders. They’ve been looking for you too. Every run, every state. Uncle Bear, Uncle Whiskey, Uncle Tango—they never gave up either.”
“I have uncles?”
“Twenty-seven of them. They’ve been saving birthday presents for three decades. Whiskey’s got a whole storage unit full. Kept saying when we found you, you’d have thirty-one birthdays at once.”
She laughed—the same laugh she’d had as a baby. “That’s insane.”
“That’s family.”
She walked me out of the station. In the parking lot, under the harsh fluorescent lights, she turned to me.
“The DNA test. Let’s do it. Just to be sure.”
“Already sure,” I said. “But we’ll do it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You bite your lower lip when you’re thinking, just like my mother. You stand with your weight on your left leg, like me. You use Johnson’s baby shampoo even though you’re thirty-three years old. And when you were arresting me, you hummed. Same tune you hummed as a baby when you were concentrating.”
“What tune?”
“‘Rhiannon’ by Fleetwood Mac. Your mother’s favorite song.”
She broke down completely then. I opened my arms, and my daughter—my lost daughter, my found daughter, my cop daughter who’d arrested me—fell into them.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry I didn’t look for you.”
“You were a baby. Then you were a kid who thought we were dead. Nothing to be sorry for.”
“I hated you. Hated someone who didn’t exist.”
“Now you know the truth.”
“Dad?” she said, and that word—that one word I’d waited thirty-one years to hear—nearly killed me. “Dad, I want my kids to meet you.”
“I’d like that.”
“They’ll love your bike.”
“I’ll teach them about motorcycles. The right way. Safe way.”
“Tyler’s been begging for a leather jacket.”
I laughed. “I know a guy.”
She pulled back, looked at me. Really looked at me. “You look exactly like your photo. The one the Chens had. From before.”
“What photo?”
She pulled out her phone, showed me. It was my Marine portrait from 1973. Young, clean-shaven, formal.
“Amy kept that?”
“The Chens found it in her things. Only picture she had of you. I used to stare at it, wondering what kind of man my father had been.”
“Now you know. Just an old biker who never stopped looking for his little girl.”
“Found her though.”