Chapter 18: The Tarp

Odette met me at her front door on Sunday in a wool coat and driving gloves.

"You're early," she said. "Good. Come see the car."

"The Mustang?"

"Is there another one?"

She took my arm and walked me through the kitchen.

A pot roast sat on the stove, and she wouldn't let me look at it.

The garage was cold again.

The grey tarp lay in a heap on the floor.

The car sat beside it with the chrome shining.

I had last seen it with Brandon's palm flat on the hood.

It looked different without him.

"I want you to look at something," Odette said.

She opened the glove box.

Inside lay an envelope gone soft with age.

On it, in square capital letters, was written TO WHOEVER DRIVES HER.

"My husband put that there the week he bought the car," she said. "I found it after the funeral. Read it."

I unfolded the card inside.

It had three sentences.

"Don't keep her in a garage. Don't win her in a bet. Take her out on a Sunday with someone you'd like to be stuck with."

I read it twice.

My throat hurt.

"He wrote it as a joke, I think," Odette said. "He never said anything he didn't mean as a joke. That's how you could tell."

"Mrs. Rittenhouse."

"Odette. I said so at the first dinner, and you ignored me."

"Odette, I can't be the one to decide what happens to the car."

"No, dear. You can be the one to drive it."

She dropped a ring of keys into my hand.

"I'm not going anywhere near the traffic," she said. "But I'll sit in the front and tell you where you're wrong."

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