“Can you fix it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Owen pulled a small light from his toolbox.
Beneath it lay a cream envelope.
His stomach tightened immediately.
He pushed a rag over it before she noticed.
Or thought she had not.
The envelope was too late to matter.
FINAL NOTICE OF POSSESSION.
December 25.
8:00 a.m.
Vale North Capital.
His daughter had not seen it.
He intended to keep it that way until after Christmas dinner.
Christmas dinner, at this point, was going to be boxed macaroni with a rotisserie chicken he had bought that morning because the grocery store marked it down.
Owen had wrapped three presents for Ellie.
A used telescope.
A set of mechanical pencils.
And the model-aircraft kit she had been asking about for six months.
He had found the kit online from a family whose son had never opened it.
Forty dollars.
The wingspan was almost four feet.
Ellie wanted to become an aeronautical engineer.
Some children changed dreams weekly.
Veterinarian Tuesday.
Singer Thursday.
Astronaut after watching one documentary.
Ellie had talked about airplanes since she was four.
Her mother had started that.
Hannah Harper loved air shows, flight museums, and building tiny balsa gliders at the kitchen table.
Before cancer took her, she had promised Ellie they would build a radio-controlled aircraft together when she was old enough.
Hannah died when Ellie was six.
Owen had spent three years trying to keep promises that technically belonged to someone else.
The garage was part of that.
Harper Auto & Machine had been started by Owen’s father in 1989.
Two service bays.
One machine room.
A tiny office.
Later, Owen added an upstairs loft where Ellie did homework.
The property sat beside an abandoned strip of municipal land that had once been used as an emergency grass airfield decades earlier.
Hannah used to joke that Ellie had airplanes in her blood because she could see old runway lights from the office window.
Owen turned back to the sedan.
The woman was watching him.
“What?”
he asked.
“You disappeared for a second.”
“I’m standing here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“Something in that toolbox bothered you.”
Owen looked down.
“You always interrogate roadside strangers?”
“Occupational habit.”
“What occupation?”
“Management.”
“That explains it.”
“Does it?”
“People in management always ask questions after the problem already happened.”
She laughed.
Owen reseated the connector.
Then reinforced the retaining clip temporarily.
“This will get you where you’re going.”
“Temporarily?”
“You need the locking assembly replaced.”
“Can I drive to Columbus?”
“Yes.”
“Fast?”
“No.”
“How fast?”
“Slow enough that if this loosens again, you have time to hate me.”
She studied his face.
“You say things like someone who has been blamed for machinery before.”
Owen stopped.
He looked at her.
Then back at the engine.
“Car’s fixed.”
He lowered the hood.
The woman handed him the umbrella as if expecting him to hold it while she opened her handbag.
Owen did not take it.
“What are you doing?”
“Paying you.”
“No.”
She paused.
“You stopped in a snowstorm.”
“Yes.”
“You repaired my car.”
“Yes.”
“People usually receive money for that.”
“People usually call a tow truck.”
“Which I tried.”
“How long?”
“Ninety minutes.”
“There you go.”
She opened the handbag anyway.
Owen picked up his toolbox.
“Seriously.”