Carter's Echo - 1. Chapter 1

**Act II: The Gravity of Soil and Steel**

The second week in Brody’s house began with the rattling hiss of a lawnmower in the distance and the smell of strong, burnt coffee. Peter McCormick was awake before the sun had fully cleared the treeline, his internal clock still tuned to the frantic, early-morning anxieties of a boy whose world had recently imploded.

He lay in the grey pre-dawn light, listening. The sound of Jason’s breathing from the other bed was a quiet, uneven rhythm. It wasn’t the peaceful sigh of sleep; it was the shallow, conscious inhale-exhale of someone pretending. They hadn’t spoken since the charged, stupid conversation in the dark. The names *Tumnus* and *Edmund* hung in the air between the two beds like ghosts they’d both agreed not to acknowledge.

Peter swung his legs out from under the sheets, the floorboards cold under his feet. He dressed quickly in the half-light, stealing a glance at the other bed. Jason was a tense lump under the blanket, facing the wall, but Peter saw the minute tightening of his shoulders at the sound of Peter’s movements. He was awake. And he was listening, just as Peter had been listening to him.

Downstairs, he found Andrew in the kitchen, staring at a single yellow Volvo key on the granite breakfast bar like it was a holy relic. Andrew was dressed for his first day back at summer law classes—a clean, ironed button-down that hung off his grieving frame as if from a coat hanger. His hair was damp, combed. He looked like a man who had decided, through sheer force of exhausted will, to impersonate a functioning human being.

“I’m taking the banana,” Andrew announced, his voice lacking its usual Coach-boom but gaining a shred of its old, pragmatic authority. “Checked the oil. It’s blacker than my soul, but it’s at the right level. Tires hold air. Jason,” he said, raising his voice slightly toward the ceiling. “You’re sure about this?”

A long pause. Then, the soft creak of the upstairs floor. Jason appeared in the kitchen doorway, dressed in another of Will’s old t-shirts and sweatpants. He looked pale, shadows like bruises under his eyes, but he met Andrew’s gaze and gave a single, firm nod. “Keys are right there. Just… don’t go over eighty. The front left shakes. Bad.”

“Vibration builds character,” Andrew muttered, pocketing the key. He looked at Peter, and for a second, the mask slipped, revealing the frantic uncertainty beneath. “Look after him. If he… I don’t know. If he looks like he’s going to climb out a window, call me. I’ve got my pager.”

“He’s not going to climb out a window,” Peter said, though he wasn’t entirely sure. “He’s going to sit in a garden chair and watch me work. Right, Jensen?”

Jason’s eyes flicked to Peter, and there it was—a flicker of the previous night’s complicated awareness, quickly shuttered behind a wall of sullen compliance. “Whatever you say, McCormick.”

With the asthmatic roar of the Volvo’s struggling exhaust fading down Compata Way, the house settled into a new, more intimate kind of quiet. It was just the two of them now, and the weight of that fact pressed down on the gleaming kitchen. Peter didn’t wait. He didn’t offer a gentle morning greeting or ask how Jason had slept. He grabbed his worn leather gardening gloves from the hook by the door and marched toward the back.

“Outside,” Peter commanded, not looking back. “Now. You’re not spending another day fossilizing in that room. The sun’s out. You’re coming out.”

He half-expected a fight, a hissed refusal. Instead, he heard the slow shuffle of footsteps behind him. Whether it was exhaustion, a lack of better options, or a morbid curiosity about the volatile, grieving boy who was now his keeper, Jason followed.

Peter set up a weathered cedar Adirondack chair in the dappled shade of the massive old oak tree, positioned with a sniper’s precision so Jason had a clear view of the garden beds but was out of the line of fire. He tossed a faded cushion onto it.

“Sit. Don’t move. Don’t help. Just… be.”

Jason lowered himself into the chair with a stiffness that spoke of deep, systemic pain. He settled his cast on the wide wooden armrest, his good hand resting on his knee. He looked like a patient in a sanatorium, waiting for a diagnosis he already knew.

Peter turned his back and attacked the garden. It wasn’t gardening; it was a declaration of war. Every thrust of the trowel into the hard-baked soil was a stab at the silence West had left behind. Every vicious yank on a dandelion’s root was a rebellion against Will’s peaceful, pragmatic departure. He worked with a fierce, mercurial energy, sweat plastering his blonde hair to his forehead within minutes, dirt smearing his cheeks and his threadbare Smiths t-shirt. He wasn’t nurturing life; he was punishing the earth for daring to be messy, for daring to grow wild in the absence of care.

At some point he just shrugged the T-shirt off, working in his shorts, unaware that Jason was now sitting up and watching him labour, like a hawk. The beads of sweat that rolled down the pale skin of his muscular back. Jason had no idea that gardening and the small artist, had wrought such a tightly muscled and wirey form.

Jason bit his lip, as for the first time he looked, he actually saw Peter. The guy was 5’7” of holy crap! And Jason had to adjust to hide the fact that he was now, VERY aware of it.

“You’re going to murder the lavender if you keep stabbing the ground like you’re trying to find its spine,” Jason’s voice cut through the rhythmic *thunk-thunk* of the trowel.

Peter froze, mid-stab. He looked up, his eyes flashing with a heat that had nothing to do with the sun. “The lavender is *fine*. It’s a hardy perennial. It *likes* the struggle. It thrives on neglect and then gets surprised when someone actually gives a shit.”

The words hung in the air, sharper than intended. Peter saw Jason absorb them, his grey eyes turning them over. He didn’t flinch. He just watched. A bead of sweat was tracing it’s way down Peter’s abdomen to the forbidden places where Jason’s imagination went wild. His eyes tore back up, and he ran his good hand through his dark hair. What the hell was going on? Why was every electrode in his brain firing at once? Much more of this and he’d go off like a firecracker.

Peter went back to his violent weeding, but the rhythm was broken. The anger bled out of his muscles, leaving behind a raw, aching fatigue. He sat back on his heels, wiping his forehead with a filthy forearm.

For a long time, the only sounds were the distant lawnmower, the buzz of bees in the overgrown lilacs, and Peter’s ragged breathing.

“How did you do it?”

Jason’s question was so quiet Peter almost missed it. He looked over. Jason wasn’t looking at him; he was staring at his own hand, clenched on the arm of the chair.

“Do what? Commit horticultural homicide? It’s a gift.”

“No.” Jason’s voice was low, strained, as if the words were being pulled from a deep, rusted well. “At school. Everyone knowing. Being… you. Out. Since, like, ninth grade. My old man…” He stopped, his jaw working. He didn’t need to finish. The map of bruises on his torso did it for him. “He would’ve buried me in the backyard if I’d even looked at a rainbow the wrong way. Would’ve called it ‘corrective landscaping.’”

Peter’s expression softened, the defensive sarcasm melting away. He studied the boy in the chair—not as a problem to be managed, but as a fellow soldier from a different, more brutal war. He plucked a blade of grass, twirling it between his fingers.

“I have a twin brother who can bench press a Volkswagen and who thinks anyone who messes with me is a personal insult to the McCormick family name,” Peter said, his voice dropping to match Jason’s quiet tone. “And I had a “brother” who was smarter than crap, and who was so tough no one could keep him down. They tried, but damnit Will would never stay down. Helped that his boyfriend was the school Coach. It provides a certain… diplomatic immunity. A deterrent. But mostly?” He met Jason’s gaze. “Mostly, I’ve just got a really shitty temper. People learn fast it’s easier to leave me the hell alone than to deal with me in a state of high-velocity irritation. It’s not bravery. It’s a personality defect with fringe benefits.”

Jason absorbed this, his brow furrowed. “I was never like that,” he whispered, almost to himself. “I was quiet. I kept my head down. I chose… I chose Blake. And then I spent every second after, in school, at home, waiting for the roof to cave in. It was like carrying a lit match in a gas station. Just waiting for the spark.”

Peter recognized the confession for what it was—a staggering act of trust. He tread carefully. “Everyone knew, Jason. Or… everyone who was paying attention. You and Blake Wolochowski behind the equipment shed after practice? You guys had the subtlety of a car crash in a library. The only reason no one gave you shit was ‘cause Blake was… well, Blake. Intense. And you were…” He hesitated, searching for a word that wasn’t ‘weasel’.

“A coward,” Jason supplied, the word flat and final.

“I was going to say ‘scared shitless,’” Peter corrected gently. “Which is a rational response to living in a fucking horror movie.”

“He wasn't scary,” Jason said, a faint, defensive heat entering his voice. It was the first passion Peter had heard from him that wasn’t fear or anger. “He was just Blake. All bones and freckles and too many books. He had a library card that was practically worn through.”

“He’s a good writer,” Peter admitted, leaning back against the warm stone of the garden bed. “Mercurial. Like me, I guess. Moody. Hard to pin down.” He shook his head, a genuine puzzle crossing his face. “But him and *Matt*? That one I don’t get. Matt’s short, he’s annoying, he’s so horny he practically vibrates, and last I checked, he was so deep in the closet he was finding Christmas presents from 1992. How does *that* even work?”

A ghost of a smile, bitter and knowing, touched Jason’s lips. “Matt doesn’t care about rules. Any rules. He just… does what he wants. Blake likes that. He likes the… the certainty of it. The lack of fear.” Jason’s good hand flexed on the chair arm. “I wasn’t enough, I guess. I was too scared to be seen with him, to hold his hand in the hall. And Matt… Matt wouldn’t just hold his hand. He’d probably make out with him in the middle of the quad just to see the vice-principal’s head explode.”

He fell silent, the admission hanging in the fragrant air. It wasn’t just about a lost boyfriend; it was a confession of a fundamental failing, a core of fear he believed had made him unlovable.

Peter opened his mouth, wanting to say something, anything, to dismantle that awful, quiet certainty. That Jason’s survival instinct wasn’t a flaw. That living in a warzone didn’t make you a bad soldier.

The moment was shattered by the muscular growl of a heavy engine and the crunch of gravel. A polished black Ford F-150 pulled into the driveway, and the world snapped back into loud, primary colours.

“MUSCLE’S HERE!” a voice bellowed, and Bobby McCormick exploded from the driver’s side.

At 5’7”, he was the mirror image of Peter, but where Peter was all sharp angles and simmering intensity, Bobby was a compact coil of kinetic energy, currently zipped into the crisp grey uniform of an OPP cadet. He moved with a bounding, purposeful stride that seemed to reject the very concept of stillness.

“Petey! You’re alive!” Bobby vaulted the low stone garden wall with ease, beaming. His eyes, identical to Peter’s in shape and colour but infinitely more mischievous, immediately locked onto Jason. The grin didn’t falter, but it shifted, becoming more assessing, more deliberately challenging. “Jensen! Look at you! Up and about! You’ve moved from ‘corpse chic’ to ‘post-apocalyptic survivor.’ Good progress!” He clapped Peter on the shoulder with a force that made Peter’s teeth rattle.

Bobby’s gaze swept over the house, the garden, and a flicker of naked envy crossed his face. “God, Brody’s place is so much cooler than Mom’s basement. I swear, the walls down there are starting to sweat testosterone and regret.”

He plopped himself down on the edge of the dry fountain basin, his posture radiating a chaotic, welcoming authority. He looked from Peter to Jason and back, his lack of subtlety a physical force in the garden.

“So,” Bobby began, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Roomies! How’s that going? Bonding over shared trauma? Discovering mutual interests?” His eyes sparkled with devious intent. “You know, Jason, Peter’s single. *Painfully* single. And gay. In case you missed the memos, the announcements in the daily bulletin, the skywriting… And you, my friend, are also a member of the club. It seems statistically inevitable, a mathematical certainty of proximity and orientation, that you two should, you know…” He made a vague but unmistakable gesture with his hands.

Peter let his head fall forward with a theatrical groan. “Bobby, I am begging you. It’s 2001. You don’t just herd the two local homosexuals into a pen and hope they mate for the good of the village.”

“I’m just promoting efficiency!” Bobby insisted, throwing his hands up. “It’s a core principle of law enforcement! Resource allocation!” He turned his full attention back to Jason, undeterred. “So, Blake Wolochowski, huh? Never saw that one. All pale and freckly. Like a skeleton someone sprinkled cinnamon on. Not my type. Ewww.”

Jason, who had been shrinking into his chair under the bombardment, suddenly bristled. The passivity burned away in a flash of protective loyalty. “He’s not ‘ewww.’ And he doesn’t have that many freckles.”

“Please,” Bobby scoffed, leaning back. “Freckles are a sign of weak character. A lack of moral fibre. Look at me.” He gestured to his own face. “Not a single one. Pure, unblemished integrity.”

Peter, who had been watching this exchange with a mixture of horror and fascination, couldn’t help himself. He paused in his feigned interest in a rose bush. “Bobby, your nose is a constellation of poor life choices and missed sunscreen opportunities. You have more freckles than a ginger at a solar flare convention.”

“Lies! Slander!” Bobby barked, his hand instinctively flying to his nose. “This is strategic pigmentation! *Peter’s* the freckly one. He’s the artistic twin. I’m the law. The law has a clear complexion.”

Jason watched them, this dizzying back-and-forth. He saw the effortless love in the insults, the deep, unshakeable knowledge of each other. It was a foreign language, a display of belonging so casual it took his breath away. His eyes flicked between their nearly identical faces, sun-dappled under the oak tree.

“You’re both covered in them,” Jason stated, his voice quiet but clear, cutting through the brotherly bickering. “You look like someone threw a handful of gravel at two identical canvases.”

Bobby stared. Peter stared. The garden was silent for one beat, then two.

Then Peter snorted. A second later, a real, sharp laugh escaped him, breaking the last of the morning’s tension.

“He’s got you there, Bob,” Peter chuckled, shaking his head. “Dead on.”

Bobby’s outrage melted into a grudging, wide grin. He pointed a finger at Jason. “You. You’re observant. I like that. Misguided, but observant.”

The front gate creaked, and the distinctive, asthmatic putter of the yellow Volvo announced Andrew’s return. The car coughed to a stop in the driveway. Andrew climbed out, looking drained but with a strange, new light in his eyes—the kind that comes from engaging a part of the brain that isn’t dedicated to mourning.

He walked over, the gravel crunching under his shoes, and tossed the key in a gentle arc. Jason caught it with his good hand, the movement surprisingly fluid.

“Classes were… classes,” Andrew reported, rubbing the back of his neck. “The car is… an experience. A character-building experience. Thanks for the loan of the banana, Jason. Seriously.” His gratitude was plain and profound. “But I need to buy something. Something with actual suspension. And a heater that doesn’t smell like a small animal died in it. Something… with a soul.”

Bobby’s eyes lit up like he’d been plugged into the mains. “POLICE AUCTION!”

Andrew’s head snapped around. “When?”

“This afternoon! Smiths Falls impound lot. They’ve got a big turnover. Confiscated, seized, abandoned… you name it. Cash and carry. It’s where dreams of questionable vehicular integrity are born. I mean most of them are drug mules, running the American border, but you know… once you vacuum out all the cocaine from the trunk, you’ll be all good.”

***

Two hours later, the four of them stood in the vast, sun-baked purgatory of the O.P.P. impound lot. The air shimmered with heat rising from acres of cracked asphalt and smelled of hot oil, stale gasoline, and despair. It was a museum of automotive misfortune. Rows of sad, rusting K-cars with busted headlights; dented minivans that spoke of chaotic family lives; pickup trucks with suspiciously clean beds and no registration.

Andrew moved through the aisles with a look of profound disdain, his hands in the pockets of his khakis. He was a Mustang man. His first love, before Will, had been a ‘69 fastback he and his dad had rebuilt in his parents’ garage. That car had been about passion, about noise, about pure, unadulterated *id*. This graveyard was its antithesis.

Peter and Jason trailed behind, Jason moving slowly, his eyes wide at the sheer volume of broken things. Bobby marched ahead, playing tour guide. “That one? Stolen from a retirement home in Perth. This one? Used in a particularly incompetent bank robbery in Carleton Place. They got stuck in the drive-thru.”

They were about to give up, to retreat to the Volvo’s humble, wheezing embrace, when they turned a corner into the farthest, most neglected corner of the lot.

And there it was.

It wasn’t parked with the other cars. It was *dumped*, half-on, half-off a set of crumbling concrete blocks. A 1999 M.U.L.E. prototype for the 2001 Mustang Concept GT. It was automotive id stripped naked. There was no paint, just raw, brushed aluminum body panels, dull and scratched. The front and rear fascias were crude, unpainted plastic, held on with visible bolts. The interior was a cave of bare metal, housing only two ripped racing seats, a full roll cage painted safety orange, and a dashboard that was a spiderweb of dangling, unconnected wires. Temporary halogen lights were bolted to the front and rear bumpers like clumsy afterthoughts. It had the aggressive, wide-hipped stance of a predator, but it looked unfinished, savage, and profoundly illegal.

“Holy mother of God,” Andrew breathed, stopping dead. All the colour drained from his face, then flooded back. He took a step forward, then another, as if pulled by a magnetic force.

Bobby hustled up beside him, his cadet professionalism utterly forgotten, replaced by pure gearhead glee. “Yeah. That’s the one. Confiscated from a design engineer at the Oshawa plant. Guy ‘borrowed’ it for a ‘long-term road test’ down the 401. Ford Canada doesn’t even know it’s missing. Paperwork lists it as ‘Generic Ford Prototype/Scrap.’ They just want it gone.”

Peter came up beside them, his artistic eye seeing the brutal, ugly truth. “Andrew. It’s a death trap. It doesn’t have a floor. I can see the pavement through the pedals. It doesn’t have a radio. It probably doesn’t have brakes.”

Andrew wasn’t listening. He was circling the car, his fingers hovering an inch above the raw metal of the fender, not quite touching it, reverent. “It’s a Mustang, Pete,” he whispered, his voice thick with something akin to religious awe. “Look at the lines. Under all this… this *honesty*. It’s the 4.6 modular V8. The Tremec T-45 transmission. The concept suspension. This isn’t a car. This is a *core sample*. It’s a blank canvas. It’s… it’s perfect.”

He finally looked at Peter, and for the first time since Will left, Peter saw the Andrew he knew—the focused, obsessive, brilliant mechanic of all things Pony. The man who could solve any problem if it involved steel and torque. Grief had hollowed him out, but this… this raw, unfinished *thing* had just poured a new kind of fuel into the tank.

“How much?” Andrew asked the auctioneer, a weary man in a sweat-stained Tilley hat who was fanning himself with a clipboard.

The man glanced at the monstrosity with profound disinterest. “That hunk of junk? No one wants it. It’s not even street-legal. Can’t insure it. It’s a lawsuit with wheels. You want it? Give me eight hundred bucks and a signed waiver saying you won’t sue us when it disintegrates and kills you.”

Andrew didn’t hesitate. He didn’t blink. He was already reaching for his wallet. “Sold.”

The process was chaotic. Paperwork was signed in triplicate, waivers initialled that essentially said ‘I know this will kill me.’ Bobby produced a rented flatbed trailer from a mate with a tow truck, and with much heaving, grunting, and shouted instructions (mostly from Andrew, who had suddenly become a general), they wrestled the bare-metal beast onto the trailer and strapped it down. It sat there, gleaming dully in the afternoon sun, a bizarre, alien artifact against the backdrop of Smith Fall’s quaint streets.

The convoy back was a surreal parade. Andrew drove the yellow Volvo, his eyes constantly flicking to the rear-view mirror to watch his acquisition. Bobby followed in his black F-150, towing the skeletal Mustang. Peter and Jason were crammed into the truck’s cab, Jason’s cast making the middle seat a precarious ordeal. His body was pressed against Peter’s from shoulder to knee with every bump and turn.

“He’s lost his mind,” Jason murmured, watching the unpainted car sway on the trailer behind them. “Why would anyone want that? It’s… it’s embarrassing.”

Peter looked from the fierce concentration on Bobby’s face as he drove, to the raw hulk of the Mustang, then down at Jason, pressed against him. He thought of his own garden, of stripping away the weeds to find the shape of something good beneath.

“Because Andrew’s a fixer,” Peter said quietly, his voice just for Jason in the rumbling cab. “He needs a problem that isn’t in a law book. A problem he can solve with his hands. And that thing?” He nodded toward the trailer. “It’s the biggest, loudest, most impossible problem he could find. It matches the noise in his head.”

He paused, a thought occurring to him. “And because my brother Bobby thinks it’s the coolest thing he’s ever seen. It’s a McCormick thing, I guess. We see something broken, something everyone else has thrown away, and we can’t help but want to know how it works. Want to see if we can make it run.”

Jason was silent, watching the Mustang. He thought of Peter’s hands in the dirt, pulling weeds to find the flowers. He thought of the raw, exposed metal of the car, hiding a powerful engine. He thought of himself, sitting in the dark, hiding a bruise-ridden body and a terrified heart.

“I think I get it,” Jason said, so softly Peter almost didn’t hear.

As they pulled into the driveway of Brody’s house, the sun was dipping below the line of ancient maples, casting the world in long, dramatic shadows of orange and purple. Andrew was out of the Volvo before Bobby had fully stopped, striding to the back of the trailer to stare at his prize.

Bobby killed the engine, and the sudden quiet was startling. The four of them gathered around the trailer, a silent circle around the aluminum beast. The evening air was cool, carrying the scent of cut grass from down the street and the sharp, metallic smell of the unpainted car.

Andrew reached out and laid his palm flat on the driver’s side door panel. The metal was still warm from the sun. A slow, real smile spread across his face—the first genuine one Peter had seen in weeks.

“First thing tomorrow,” Andrew announced, his voice full of a purpose that had been missing for a month, “we find a radio. I can’t drive this thing in silence. It needs a soundtrack.”

Bobby laughed, a loud, happy sound that echoed in the quiet street. “I know a guy who knows a guy with a junkyard full of Fox-body parts! Police auction connections, baby! We’ll have this thing screaming down the county roads in no time!”

Peter rolled his eyes, but he was smiling too. It was ridiculous. It was wonderful. It was a project. He looked at Jason, who was standing a little apart, his face unreadable in the twilight.

“You coming, Tumnus?” Peter called out, nodding toward the car. “We’ve got a monstrous, illegal death-trap to rebuild. Could use a guy who knows how to follow instructions.”

Jason looked from Peter to Andrew, who was now peering excitedly into the engine bay with Bobby. He looked at the house, no longer just a beautiful shell holding grief, but a place with a weird, unfinished car in its driveway. A workshop.

He took a step forward, then another, until he was standing at Peter’s shoulder, looking up at the raw, unvarnished steel.

“Whatever,” Jason said, but he didn’t move away.

The House of Mending was officially open for business. And its first major project had four wheels, no paint, and an engine waiting to roar.