Chapter 14: The Garage

The file name was just his name and a date.

Quentin. Six years ago, in October.

"Have you heard it?" I asked.

"The first four seconds," Simon said. "Long enough to see who it was for. Then I stopped."

I looked at it for a long time.

In my first life, Quentin had Mother's things boxed and hauled away the week after I found the ledger.

He never knew there was anything to keep.

"It's his," I said. "Not mine."

"It's on an estate system, which makes it the estate's, which makes it..."

"Simon."

"Yours," he said. "To give, or not."

"Then he hears it. With me in the room. Not on a laptop in some lawyer's office."

Simon closed the laptop.

"He's already in North Carolina," he said. "He called my office from the Raleigh airport at four. He wanted your address. I said I'd ask you."

"Don't give it to him."

"I won't."

"He won't need it," Gage said from the doorway. "Ask anybody in Liberty where I work."

At eight the next morning I took a bag of biscuits down to the garage.

It sat on the highway by the feed store, three bays and a soda machine.

The tire company calendar on the wall still said August.

Gage was under a pickup on the lift.

Two of the other mechanics were arguing about a carburetor.

The owner was in the office with the radio on, pretending to do paperwork.

At eight twenty a gray rental sedan pulled into the lot and parked across the air hose.

Quentin got out in a navy suit and shoes that had never stood on gravel.

He looked at the bays, the oil stains and the soda machine.

Then he saw me on the bench by the door, and he came straight in.

The carburetor argument stopped.

Gage rolled out from under the pickup and stood up, wiping his hands on a red rag.

He was bigger than Quentin, and wider, and he didn't hurry.

"You're the brother," Gage said.

"Quentin Talcott."

Quentin held out his hand.

Gage looked at it and kept wiping his.

"You stood on my mama's porch," Gage said. "In a suit like that. You told my sister you'd take care of everybody she loved."

"I did."

"You said my name. I heard you through the screen door. I was fixing the toaster."

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