PART 16:

He stood at the garage door in a Saturday fishing vest, which he wore regardless of whether he was going fishing, and looked at the car with his hands in his pockets. Can I see it?” he said. Adrienne led him in. Roger walked around the car the way most people who were genuinely looking at something walked around it slowly without talking.

He crouched in a couple spots. He looked at the underside briefly without touching. He stood back and looked at the whole thing. “I said it should be burned,” Roger said without preamble. “I heard,” Adrien said. “I was wrong.” Adrien said nothing, which Roger seemed to take as the appropriate response. What I can see, Roger said, even without knowing what I’m looking at, whoever built this cared about it.

You can see that. Even with the damage. He put his hands back in his pockets. I spent 22 years in the military, and I’ve seen a lot of things that looked broken. Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t. He looked at Adrien. I should have looked more carefully. It was a more substantial admission than Adrien had expected from Roger Pressman, and he received it with the same respect with which it had been offered.

“Most people don’t,” Adrien said. “Doesn’t make it right,” Roger said. “Then where’s it going?” “Museum in Santa Fe, 2 weeks,” Roger nodded. He took one more look at the car. “Good,” he said. “It should be somewhere people can see it.” He walked to the garage door and then stopped. the man who built it, Welder.

Did he know it survived the fire? I don’t know, Adrienne said. He might still be alive, Roger said. If he’s not too old. Adrienne had thought about this. He thought about it quite a bit, actually. He might be, he said. Someone should look, Roger said. Yes, Adrienne said. Someone should. Roger left. Adrienne stood in the garage with Roger’s question sitting in the space the man had vacated.

He’d been trying not to think too directly about this, about the possibility that Frank Welder was not simply a historical figure, but a living person somewhere who had spent 40 years not knowing that the thing he’d built had survived. Because if Welder was alive, and if he’d spent 40 years believing the prototype was gone, believing his work was ash, then the discovery didn’t just matter for the museum exhibit, it mattered for him.

Adrienne sat down on the garage floor back against the workbench and thought about that. He was still thinking about it when Evelyn appeared at the garage door at 6 with the red thermos and a paper bag from the diner. “I brought food,” she said. “Real food, not just coffee. Ronny’s makes a decent chicken sandwich when the right person is on the grill.

” “He hadn’t eaten since the banana bread.” He hadn’t noticed until she said it. She sat on the overturned bucket, same spot as always, and he sat on the creeper he’d pulled out from under the workbench, and they ate the chicken sandwiches, which were in fact decent. Mason came out from the house in his pajamas at 6:30, which meant bedtime had already been negotiated down from 7 to 7:30, and he was conducting a final reconnaissance before the process became unavoidable.

“Evelyn,” Mason said, with the satisfaction of someone finding something they expected to find. “Hey, bud,” she said. Why are you in pajamas at 6:30? Dad says 7:30, Mason said, making this sound like an injustice while also reporting it accurately. He makes the rules, she said. Mason considered this philosophical position. Do you want to see my drawing? He said, I made a new one.

He produced it from somewhere. It had clearly been in his pajama pocket, which raised questions about his level of premeditation, and handed it to Evelyn. She looked at it with genuine attention, tilting it slightly as though calibrating for the correct angle. This one has 17 wheels, she said. 18, Mason corrected. One is behind the thing.

What thing? The thing in the back. Mason pointed at a shape that could have been many things. It makes it go faster. Of course, she said. She looked at him. It’s great. I like the colors. Mason received this with dignity and said good night to both of them. shook his father’s hand. They had a handshake, complicated and specific, and went inside.

“The garage was quieter after Mason.” “Roger Pressman came by today,” Adrien said. “I know. I saw him go in.” He asked if Welder might still be alive. Evelyn looked at him steadily. “What do you think?” “He’d be in his 80s, roughly based on what I’ve been able to piece together about his career timeline.” Adrienne looked at the car.

He might be Lauron’s research fund. She said that could find him if he can be found. Adrienne said he disappeared on purpose. 40 years is a long time to be unfindable. People disappear until someone looks hard enough. She said, “You found his car under 40 years of rust.” He looked at her.

There was something in the way she said it. The simple direct confidence of it that landed differently than the same observation would have from most people. Lauron needs to know this might be possible, Adrienne said. Before the exhibit goes public. If Welder is alive, he deserves to know the car survived before it becomes a news story. Call Luron, Evelyn said.

I will, he said. Monday, she nodded. They sat with the car in the Saturday evening and the space heater and the October dark outside the garage door. The neighborhood had gone quiet in the way it went quiet at dinnertime. the sounds of families settling into their evening routines filtering through from various directions.

“Can I tell you something?” Evelyn said. “Yes,” he said, which was the only answer he had for her. “I was going to move,” she said at the end of the year. “I’ve been thinking about it for months. The diner isn’t it’s not going anywhere, and neither am I. And I had this vague idea about going back to school or trying something else somewhere else.

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