It was the first time she used his name.
He noticed.
“So did my father.”
“What?”
“He used to think saying somebody’s name right before ordering them around made it sound polite.”
Camille’s mouth opened.
Noah looked at his shoes, hiding a smile.
Against every instinct, Camille almost smiled too.
Then she remembered the badge.
Her father.
The car.
She turned away.
“Fine.”
“What do you want?”
“Independent witnesses.”
“Photographs.”
“My attorney.”
“Your counsel if you want.”
“And police?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what this is.”
Camille crossed her arms.
“That makes two of us.”
Evan took out his phone.
Camille looked at the old car.
A memory returned.
She was eleven.
Her father had come home after midnight smelling of rain and machine oil.
He sat at the kitchen counter while she ate cereal because she had pretended to be asleep until she heard the door.
He gave her a silver marker and a small piece of blue tape.
“What should the fast one be called?” he asked.
She had written:
COMET
The letters were crooked.
Her father laughed.
“Too pretty.”
She stuck the tape on the inside of his leather notebook.
“Then don’t ask me.”
He kissed the top of her head.
Three weeks later, he died.
Camille stepped toward the cockpit.
Dust coated everything.
The steering wheel was small and flat-bottomed.
A faded strip of blue tape wrapped around one spoke.
Her stomach dropped.
She reached.
Evan said softly:
“Camille.”
She stopped.
He had used her first name now.
Not CEO.
Not Ms. Arden.
Camille ignored him.
She wiped the tape.
Under the grime, faint silver letters appeared.
C—
O—
M—
Her knees weakened.
She sat on the edge of the hydraulic platform.
Noah moved forward instinctively.
His father placed one hand lightly against the boy’s shoulder, not to stop him completely, only to let Camille choose whether she wanted anyone close.
Camille touched the tape.
Her own handwriting.
No one else could know.
Nobody.
She whispered:
“I did this.”
Evan’s expression softened.
“When?”
“I was eleven.”
Noah looked at the tape.
Camille pressed her thumb to the faded letters.
“He brought this home?”
“No.”
“He brought the steering wheel.”
“I wrote on it.”
She closed her eyes.
For twenty-two years, the only objects Arden Mobility returned to her family after the crash had been a melted wristwatch, a damaged wedding ring, and part of her father’s leather briefcase.
The car was supposedly ash.
Yet here was the steering wheel.
Here was her childish marker.
Here was proof that at least one foundational fact of her life had been false.