PART 2:

Whoever owned it, they didn’t know what they had, and what they had was a pile of junk. What do you want for it? Adrienne asked. Bertram looked at him with the calculation of a man who had been selling things for 50 years. You see something in it. I see a project, Adrienne said, which was technically true. I was going to crush it end of the month. Nothing usable.

Bertram kicked one of the flattened tires without enthusiasm. Tell you what, $100, you haul it off today. Saves me the trouble. Adrien paid in cash, which he always had, and arranged for a flatbed out of town to deliver it to Sycamore Drive that afternoon. On the drive home, Mason ate his Waterburger and announced that Saturday’s salvage yard score was 412 points, which was a personal record.

Adrien drove and didn’t say much, but he was doing something with his left hand that Mason recognized, tapping a specific rhythm against his thigh. Three beats and a pause. Three beats and a pause. It was the thing he did when he was working something out. Mason didn’t ask about it. He’d learned that some things needed to be worked out in silence first.

The flatbed arrived at 2:30 that afternoon. By 2:45, Sycamore Drive had an audience. It started with Dale Hutchkins, who was washing his car in the driveway at number 14 and stopped with the hose still running when the flatbed rolled past. His wife, Darlene, appeared from the front door 30 seconds later with the specific radar of a person who operates a neighborhood information network.

By 3:00, there were six people standing on the sidewalk across from Adrienne’s house. And by 3:15, there were 11, including Roger Pressman from the corner, who had driven back from Home Depot, specifically because Darlene had called him. The car lowered by the flatbed onto Adrienne’s driveway looked even worse in full daylight and in relation to normal human beings who could stand next to it for scale.

It was a small vehicle, compact, low to the ground. Though the exact original dimensions were hard to determine given the damage, the body was crumpled at multiple points. The rust was comprehensive. There was a section of the roof that had partially collapsed. One of the rear wheel wells was so deformed it looked like the car had been angry about something and tried to fold itself in half.

“Lord have mercy,” Darlene said. “He paid to have that delivered?” Roger said. $100 I heard,” said Dale, though he hadn’t heard this from any reliable source. “You can’t even tell what it is,” said Kesha Washington from number nine, who had joined the group with her twins in a double stroller. “Is that a car?” “It was,” Roger said. “Once, probably.

” From across the street, Adrienne directed the flatbed driver with hand signals, got the car positioned correctly on his driveway, signed some paperwork, and thanked the driver with a handshake. Then he stood in front of the wreck with his hands on his hips and looked at it for a while. He must have felt this audience because he glanced across the street.

He didn’t seem bothered by the collection of neighbors. He gave a small unremarkable wave, the kind of wave that says, “Yeah, I see you.” rather than, “Hello,” and then turned back to the car. “He’s going to restore that,” Darlene said. “He’d be better off burning it,” Roger said. “Maybe he paid $100 too much,” Dale said, and several people laughed.

Mason appeared from the side of the house, still holding what was left of his Waterburger wrapper, and stood beside his father, looking at the car with the same expression his father wore. Not enthusiasm exactly, but a kind of serious engagement, a willingness to contend with the thing in front of him. “What do we do first?” Mason asked.

“Clean it up,” Adrienne said. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with until you can see it.” Mason nodded like this was perfectly reasonable advice about anything. Across the street, Darlene was already composing the next door post in her head. Evelyn Pierce had been working the 6 to2 shift at Ronnie’s Diner on Magnolia Avenue for 3 years, which meant she had served approximately 47,000 cups of coffee to people she’d mostly never see again.

Endured two managers who couldn’t organize a grocery list, survived a kitchen fire that had been significantly more dramatic than the local news reported, and saved slightly less money than she needed to feel like she was getting somewhere. She was 30 years old, which she was mostly fine with, though some mornings it surprised her.

She had her mother’s practicality and her father’s stubbornness, which was a combination that served her better than she gave it credit for. Her apartment on Sycamore Drive, she rented the small upstairs unit at number seven, was clean and sparse in the way of someone who has learned not to accumulate things they might have to move quickly.

She owned exactly what she used and used most of what she owned. She had noticed Adrienne Callaway the way you notice someone who exists at the edge of your peripheral vision. Not with great interest, but with the background awareness of a person trying to understand their environment. She knew he was quiet. She knew he had a kid.

She knew he worked in his garage at odd hours because she could see the light from her bedroom window on nights when she was up late, which was often. She had not introduced herself in 18 months, which she was privately embarrassed about, but had been too busy surviving to address. The Saturday the car arrived, she was walking home from a late shift.

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