Actual dinner, not scrambled eggs. chicken and rice and green beans because Ethan had gone to the grocery store in Prescott and bought food without looking at the prices, which was a new and slightly disorienting experience. Lily had noticed. You bought the good peanut butter, she’d said in the store, holding up the jar with something close to awe.
Don’t get used to it. I’m already used to it. This is our peanut butter now. at the table with the fan spinning overhead in the new fridge delivered yesterday, the old one hauled away by two men who’d looked at it with undisguised pity. Humming quietly in the corner, Ethan told Lily about Aurora’s visit.
She apologized, Lily said, spearing a green bean. Sort of in her way. What does in her way mean? It means she said she was wrong without actually using the word sorry. Some people are like that. They can admit a mistake but can’t say the word. That’s weird. That’s human. Lily thought about this. Did you forgive her? There wasn’t much to forgive.
She made an offer. I said no. She made more offers. I kept saying no. At the end of the day, she was just someone who wanted something and tried to get it. That’s not a crime. It’s just business. But she tried to take advantage. She tried to get a deal. There’s a line between the two. And honestly, I’m not always sure where it falls.
She thought I didn’t know what I had. She was partially right. If I hadn’t found those documents, I probably would have sold the car to her for 2 million and thought I’d won the lottery. But you did find them. Because I was cleaning the garage because the shop was slow and I had nothing better to do. There’s no grand plan in that, Lil. It was dumb luck.
It wasn’t all luck. You recognized what the documents meant. You called Dr. Hail. You said no to $7 million when we had 400 in the bank. That’s not luck. That’s She trailed off, searching for the word. Stubbornness. I was going to say courage, but yeah, stubbornness works, too. He almost choked on his rice. She grinned.
It was Rachel’s grin, wide and slightly crooked and completely without pretense. The weeks that followed settled into a rhythm that was both new and familiar. Ethan contracted a crew from Prescott to expand the garage, a proper expansion this time, not salvage steel beams from an abandoned gas station.
The new bay would double his workspace. He’d have a real lift instead of the floor jack he’d been using. Insulated roof, climate control, an office, even with a desk and a computer and a filing system that wasn’t a shoe box on a shelf. He hired help. a young mechanic named Danny Tran, 24, who’d graduated from a vocational program in Phoenix and couldn’t find a shop willing to train him because everyone wanted 5 years experience for an entry-level position.
Dany showed up for the interview in clean coveralls with his own tools, which Ethan respected. And when Ethan asked him what his biggest weakness was, Dany said, “I talk too much when I’m nervous, and I’m nervous right now, so I apologize in advance.” Ethan hired him on the spot. The sign came down on a Saturday. Lily supervised.
The new one was cedar, handcarved by a craftsman. Donna had recommended. Cross auto repairs and restoration. The addition of restoration was Lily’s idea. You should do restorations. She’d said, “You’re the guy who found the Pinnacle Mustang. People are going to bring you interesting cars. You should be ready.” I fix trucks, Lily.
You can fix trucks and do restorations. It’s called diversifying. We learned about it in the advanced reading elective. I thought the advanced reading elective was about the universe dying. We moved on. Now it’s economics. The sign went up straight, perfectly level. Ethan stood on the road and looked at it and felt something settle inside him.
Not satisfaction exactly, but alignment. The sense that the outside of his life was finally matching the inside. He put money away for Lily, a trust like the adviser recommended that she’d access at 25. Enough for college, enough for a start in whatever she wanted to do. He didn’t tell her the exact amount.
She’d asked once, and he’d said, “Enough.” And she’d accepted that with the pragmatism of someone who’d grown up counting dollars and understood that money was a tool, not a score. He paid off the house. He bought a new truck, not flashy, a regular Ford F250 work model, because he needed something that could tow a trailer and haul parts and survive the Red Creek roads without complaining.
Lily had lobbied for something cooler. He’d said no. She’d called him boring. He’d accepted the label. He donated money to the school, not a fortune, enough to fund the summer program for 3 years and replace the ancient computers in the library. The principal called to thank him and asked if he wanted a plaque or a dedication. He said no. Lily said yes.
They compromised on a small name plate on the new reading room door, the Henry Cross reading room. Because Henry had never been a reader, and the irony would have made him laugh. Dr. Hail came back one more time. He flew to Arizona on his own, rented the same terrible Nissan, and drove to Red Creek on a Tuesday afternoon.
He and Ethan sat in the garage. the expanded, climate controlled, properly lit garage and drank coffee from the new machine that Dany had insisted on buying because no self-respecting shop runs on gas station coffee. “You’ve done well,” Hill said, looking around. “It’s a start. It’s more than a start. You’ve preserved the place. You haven’t abandoned it.
