“I know,” Dad says. “I’m sorry about that—and for all the time you’ve been on your own at night while I’ve been working on this. Wanted to surprise you. Was trying to hold out until your new chair got here. Then I realized if I wanted to stop worrying about you totaling yourself, I needed to step it up a bit.”

I stare at the perfect setup, and a thought slowly dawns.

“So, you never actually believed I couldn’t…?”

Dad pulls off his cap and runs a hand through his already messy hair. “Of course not, Emms,” he says. “But that raggedy old ramp of mine wasn’t safe. Probably not even for me to use anymore. I’ve had to get used to your mom not being around to reel me back here and there when I don’t think about some of those things. Maybe I went too far the other way. But how could I believe you couldn’t do it? I mean, whose kid are you?”

I immediately think of Dad at the skate park, flying over the curves on his board as easy as breathing.

“You know,” I point out, “you could’ve just said something.”

Dad laughs again, only this time it’s more than a little choky. “Don’t you know by now? This is how I say something.”

I do know.

It’s all so clear now.

Dad built this whole, beautiful setup for me. That’s probably why he flunked his class, why I haven’t seen him for weeks. One-track Dad, charging forward toward one most important thing and accidentally forgetting everything else in the process.

All to show me what he can’t ever quite say. That he absolutely believes in me.

Dad pulls it together, barely. “I never told you why I built the shop so big, did I?”

“Yeah?”

“Plain old gut-wrenching fear. I’d just found out your mom and I were expecting you, was flat-out terrified. Was practically still a kid myself, no idea how I’d possibly be a good father. So I came out here, marked some lines in the sand, and started building. Must’ve been more stressed than I knew, because I built way more than I needed.”

Dad looks at his new creation in the third bay and nods to himself. “Only it turned out I didn’t,” he says. “I just didn’t know I’d be building part of it for you one day.”

Okay. He needs to stop this before I lose it completely.

“Well, we going to sit here getting gushy?” I ask. “Or we going to try this thing out?”

Dad grins and holds up my helmet and pads, which I now see he’s already laid out on the workbench. “What do you think? Time to go pinch it, girl.”

I laugh, remembering how he used to toss me over his head to pinch the full moon. Then, as I rush toward the steps at the end, trying to wheel and pull on my helmet at the same time, I notice what’s painted on the side of them. Since Dad couldn’t draw his way out of a paper bag if his life depended on it, he must’ve gotten his friend who does airbrushing on cars and motorcycles to paint the design.