I put my hand on his shoulder, feeling the tremors of grief running through him—tremors I knew too well. “It will,” I promised. “Not today.
Not tomorrow. But it will.”
As we walked together toward the chapel, thunder rolled across the sky—a deep, powerful sound that seemed to vibrate through the ground beneath our feet. A storm coming, or perhaps just passing by.
The father looked up, then back at me with the ghost of a smile. “He always loved storms,” he said. “Said it was like the sky was talking.”
I nodded, understanding perfectly.
“My Mikey too.”
Sometimes I think that’s what we are now, all of us Steel Angels with our rumbling bikes and weathered faces. We’re the thunder that comes when the storm has passed. We’re the echo that remains when a child’s voice has been silenced.
We’re the promise that someone is listening, even when it seems like no one can hear you. Nobody expects fifty bikers to show up for one child. But when they do, it changes everything.
And maybe, just maybe, it saves the next child. The one who’s writing their goodbye note right now. The one who might hear our thunder and decide to wait.
To see what tomorrow brings. For Mikey’s sake, I have to believe that’s true.
