The third time Mira saw Jace, she brought him a ghost.
Or rather, the ghost of a hard drive.
"It was my dad's," she said, placing the heavy external drive on the counter like an offering. "He used it for everything. Photos, journals, some old home videos. I haven't opened it in years."
Jace looked at it like a detective inspecting a cold case. "What happened?"
"It clicks. Doesn't open. Computer won't even register it now."
"Click of death," he muttered, fingers already lifting the edge of the casing. "Might be mechanical."
"Can you fix it?"
He gave her a look she was beginning to decode—half challenge, half "Don't get your hopes up."
"I'll try."
Today he looked a little more worn than usual—dark circles under his eyes, a faint scrape along his jaw like he'd rushed through shaving. His flannel sleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing forearms smudged with ink or grease.
Mira tried not to stare. She failed.
"Late night?" she asked, pretending to examine a stack of retro Polaroids on the counter.
"Sort of."
"Doing what?"
Jace hesitated. "Building something."
Mira turned to him. "You build things?"
"When I'm not fixing broken ones, yeah."
"What kind of things?"
He didn't answer at first, eyes focused on unscrewing the casing. Then: "Stuff that works better when you start from scratch."
Mira nodded slowly. "You ever think people work that way, too?"
Jace looked up. "Starting over?"
"Yeah."
"All the time."
She blinked. That wasn't the answer she expected.
---
He pried open the drive with surgeon-level care, exposing the tiny disk inside. As he leaned forward under the light, Mira watched the way his brow creased, the precision in his hands.
There was something intimate about watching someone so absorbed in a task. Like she was witnessing a private ritual.
After a few minutes, he shook his head. "This disk's warped. Heads are misaligned. If I had a donor drive, I could transplant them. But it's risky."
"What kind of risk?"
"You get one shot. Could make it worse."
She hesitated. "There's a video in there. Of my dad singing to my mom. She used to play it when she missed him. She died last year."
Jace froze.
Then he nodded once. "I'll do it."
---
An hour passed.
Mira paced the shop, occasionally watching Jace work from a distance, resisting the urge to ask if it was going okay. She explored shelves, found a framed photo turned face-down, and almost flipped it before thinking better of it.
Curiosity buzzed in her bones.
Finally, Jace exhaled sharply. "Got it."
Mira darted over.
He plugged the drive into a different reader. A second later, a folder popped up on his laptop.
Jace didn't smile—but Mira did. A deep, watery smile that cracked something in her chest.
"There," he said. "Saved everything. Video's at the top."
She reached for the laptop, but he gently turned it toward her instead, then stepped back.
The screen filled with static for half a second, then a man's voice hummed through cheap old speakers. Her dad, a guitar in his lap, her mom curled up beside him on a yellow couch. He sang off-key, and she laughed every time he missed a chord.
Mira bit her lip.
"I haven't heard this in... years."
She didn't realize she was crying until she felt a tissue in her hand.
Jace stood nearby, gaze fixed on anything but her.
"Thanks," she whispered.
He nodded, but didn't speak. And maybe that silence said more than words would've.
---
As she was leaving, laptop under her arm, drive safely in her bag, she paused at the door.
"Why do you do this?" she asked. "Work in a place nobody notices. Fix things most people would throw out."
Jace was already back at the counter. He didn't look up.
"Because some things are worth saving," he said.
The bell chimed as she stepped outside.
And Mira knew she'd be back again.
Not for repairs.
But for the man who fixed broken things—and maybe, just maybe, believed she wasn't beyond saving either.