You Drive Me Crazy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: House Rules

Eli befriends Cade's father while Cade is gentle with him; Vivian recognizes Mara in front of everyone and asks Eli his birthday.

Cade let the lie sit between us for three full seconds.

Then he nodded once.

"Then you'll see it fresh," he said.

I wanted to put my fist through the tarp.

Instead I pulled on my gloves, because hands that are busy do not shake.

By ten o'clock I had the Mustang's doors off and the floor pans out in the light.

Eli sat on an upturned bucket and sorted bolts into coffee cans by size.

He did it better than most apprentices I had hired.

A big man limped in from the house with a mug in each hand.

He had a white crew cut, suspenders, and hands.

"Amos Renfro," he said, and put one mug in front of me without being asked.

"That's my son's coffee. He won't miss it."

"Mara Tolland."

"I know. He talks about nothing else."

My heart did something unpleasant.

"About the job," Amos added, with a look that was a little too slow.

Eli held up a bolt. "Mr. Renfro, is this a five-sixteenths?"

Amos squinted, took it, and turned it in the light.

"That's a three-eighths, son. Good eye. Wrong can."

"Oh." Eli swapped it and glanced up, grinning. "I knew that."

"You did not."

"I knew it a little."

Amos laughed so hard he had to sit down on a toolbox.

Across the bay, Cade watched from the doorway, a coil of air hose in his scarred hand.

He was not watching me.

He was watching my son.

"Eli," I said sharply.

"Yes?"

"Don't bother Mr. Renfro."

"He's not bothering anybody," Cade said.

His voice was low and perfectly even.

"He sorts better than my last three guys."

"Then your last three guys were bad."

"They were," Cade said. "I fired all of them."

I turned back to the car so he could not see my face.

Eli told Amos about our truck, our dog Sparky who had died, and his teacher's gold teeth.

Amos told him you could hear a bad bearing if you held a screwdriver to your ear.

Eli spent the next ten minutes with a screwdriver against his ear, listening to a Mustang that had no engine in it.

At noon I heard heels on the concrete outside.

They stopped at the garage door and did not come in until everyone had noticed them.

The woman in the doorway wore a cream suit and pearls.

Her dark blond hair was in a knot so smooth it looked painted on.

I had last seen her at six in the morning in a robe that belonged to the man behind me, with a diamond on her left hand.

Vivian Haskell.

"Cade," she said warmly. "You didn't tell me the restorer was here."

"I didn't think I owed you the schedule."

"Of course not." She smiled and crossed the floor, and looked at me properly for the first time.

The smile did not change at all.

That was how I knew.

"But I know you," Vivian said. "You were with the number nine team. A junior mechanic. Mara, isn't it?"

"It is."

"You left so suddenly. Six in the morning, with no notice. We never did hear why."

Her voice carried to every corner of the bay.

Amos stopped laughing.

Cade did not move at all.

"I had a better offer," I said.

"Seven years ago?" Vivian said. "I'm sure it was a good one."

"It was."

"And now you restore cars."

"Now I fix whatever people like you break."

A small, clean silence.

Vivian's smile held. "How refreshing," she said.

She turned to Cade, touched his sleeve, and left her hand there.

"Dale's old sponsors are ready to sign the comeback papers. We should talk tonight."

"Tomorrow," Cade said.

"Tonight."

"Tomorrow, Viv."

She took her hand back slowly, and her eyes slid from his face to the bench where my son sat with a screwdriver pressed to his ear.

Eli pulled it away and waved.

"Hi! Are you a friend of Mr. Cade's?"

"I'm an old friend," said Vivian. "And who might you be?"

"Eli Tolland. I'm six and a half."

"Six and a half. What a good age."

Her gaze lingered on his cowlick, his gray eyes, the way he held the screwdriver in his left hand.

I stepped across the floor and put my body between them.

"When is your birthday, Eli?" Vivian asked sweetly. "Every boy loves to be asked."

"March fourteenth," Eli said. "I'm going to be seven. Mom says I can have a cake shaped like a carburetor."

Vivian did not answer.

She did the arithmetic standing right there in her cream suit, and I watched her do it.

Then she looked at Cade, and Cade looked at the floor.

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