PART 9:

Stimius once in a 2017 charity auction where he’d purchased a fragment of what was claimed to be original Caldwell Rice bodywork later determined to be a fabrication for an amount that had caused considerable comment at the time. How long do I have? Adrienne asked. Before someone shows up, Deborah said, “If Laurent has a Google alert and the forum post is indexed, I wouldn’t assume more than a few days.

” He looked at the car, at the dents and the damage and the work he’d done and the work that remained at the plate he’d uncovered Monday night, the seven characters that confirmed what the car was. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I’m sorry I created the problem,” she said. “You confirmed what I already knew,” he said. “The problem would have come eventually.

” He hung up and sat in the garage with his hands on his knees for a while, thinking. The neighborhood was quiet. The work light hummed. The car sat on the lift under the fluorescent glow, still damaged, still ugly, but no longer anonymous. He thought about what to do next and made a decision that surprised him slightly, which was that he wasn’t going to do anything yet.

He was going to keep working. He was going to document everything he could document in the time he had because whatever happened next, he wanted to know this car fully before it became something else, before it became an event instead of a project. before the world arrived and took it out of the quiet space of what it had been when it was just him and a $100 wreck and a work light and cold coffee. He picked up his camera.

He had a few days. He was going to use them. The next morning, Friday, Mason announced at breakfast that several kids at school had asked him if his dad was famous. Adrien looked up from his coffee. “What did you say?” “I said no.” Mason said. “Are you?” No, Adrien said. Mason considered this with the thorough fairness he applied to most questions.

Okay, he said. But Tommy Nwin said his mom heard that you found something important in the car. Tommy Nwen’s mom doesn’t know what’s in the car. That’s what I said. Mason ate a spoonful of cereal. I said dad doesn’t talk about the car to people. He paused. Except to the coffee lady. Adrien looked at his son. The coffee lady.

Evelyn, she comes with the red thermos. Mason said this with the matter-of-fact tone of someone reporting observable facts. She stays for a long time. She’s a neighbor, Adrienne said. Mhm. Mason said in a tone that implied he was filing this information in a category Adrien might not have intended. Adrien drank his coffee and said nothing further, which was a tactical decision.

He called Evelyn that afternoon, which was the first time he had called her. He’d gotten her number from the building’s shared information sheet that all tenants on the block had contributed to, which had seemed appropriate and also slightly cowardly, a distinction he chose not to examine. She picked up on the third ring.

Adrien, the situation has changed, he said. With the car, I thought you should know a beat. How changed? Information got out. There are people in the vintage motorsport community who know something has been found. I don’t think anyone knows where yet, but that’s probably temporary. How temporary? Days, he said. Maybe less.

She was quiet for a moment. He could hear background noise. The diner probably the sound of a kitchen working. What does that mean for you? It means I need to decide some things before someone else decides them for me. He paused. I thought you might want to be around for that conversation. The pause before she answered was short.

What time? Tonight, after Mason’s asleep, 8:30. I’ll bring the thermos, she said. She arrived at 8:25, which he noticed. She had changed out of her work clothes, dark jeans, and a green jacket that was slightly too big for her in a way that managed not to look bad. and she brought not just the thermos, but a box of the butter cookies from Ronnie’s that were objectively one of the better things Ronnie’s produced.

Mason was asleep. The garage was warm. The October nights had dropped further, and he’d turned up the space heater. The car sat on the lift, cleaned and photographed and documented, more known than it had been a week ago, but still carrying its damage. Still carrying all the years it had spent being nobody’s priority.

He told her everything, not in pieces, not carefully managed, all of it in order, from the frame markings to Deborah Shanks to the forum thread to Victor Lauron’s name and what it meant. He told her about Frank Welder and what he’d reconstructed of the man’s history, which wasn’t much, but was more than nothing.

He told her about the aluminum plate under the dashboard bracket and the seven characters and what they confirmed. She listened without interrupting, which was a thing she did well. She ate one of the butter cookies and held her mug in both hands and looked at the car while he talked. And when he finished, she was quiet for a moment. So, someone’s coming, she said.

Yes. And you haven’t decided what to do. I know some of what I want, he said. I haven’t figured out how to get it. She looked at him. What do you want? It was the direct question, and he’d known she’d ask it eventually because directness was one of her primary qualities, and he’d been thinking about the answer for 2 days.

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