"She called me from the lot," Nadia said. "Before she left." "She was..." She stopped.
"She seemed calmer than she was when she left the house." Ray didn't say anything to that. He didn't push the conversation toward what the girl had been upset about. It wasn't his to ask.
Nadia seemed to notice that. The not asking. Something in her expression shifted. Just slightly.
The same way a door opens a half inch before you decide whether to push it the rest of the way. "She said you gave her water," Nadia said. "She'd been crying for a while." "She had."
A pause. "She doesn't like for people to notice when she's struggling." "She gets that from me, I think." She said it without apology, just plainly. "I didn't make a thing of it," Ray said.
"She didn't need me to make a thing of it." Nadia was quiet again. Then: "Do you have children?" He met her eyes.
"I had a daughter." She heard the had. She did not flinch from it, and she did not rush past it. She held it the way you hold something someone hands you that you understand is heavy.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Thank you," he said. Neither of them spoke for a moment. The shop was quiet except for the sound of the radio in the back bay, low.
Outside, a truck passed on the street. "I'll have someone pick me up," she said finally, taking her phone out. "What time tomorrow should I come for the car?" "Call ahead in the morning. I'll know by then when the part will arrive."
She nodded. She looked at him one more time, not in a searching way, in the way of someone who has already found what they were looking for and is deciding whether to say so. She did not say so. "Thank you, Ray," she said.
She walked out of the shop and across the lot and through the front gate, and he watched her go the way he had watched her daughter go the night before. The same careful attention, different reason. He went back to the pickup. He had the alternator in and the truck running by 2:00 in the afternoon.
He ordered the engine mount for the Range Rover online, chose the faster delivery, paid for it out of pocket, and noted it in the invoice to be settled later. He didn't know why he paid for faster delivery. He didn't examine the reason too closely. At 4:00, his part-time helper, a 22-year-old named Cal, came in to help him with an oil change that had been sitting since morning.
Cal was a good kid, quiet worker. He asked few questions, which Ray appreciated, but as they were finishing up, Cal looked over at the Range Rover sitting in the far bay. "That a customer car?" he asked.
"Yeah," Ray said. "Engine mount?" "Yeah." Cal wiped his hands.
"That the Voss woman's car? The one from downtown?" Ray looked at him. "You know her?"
"I know the name. My aunt works in her building. She was on the news last year. Something about a big project."
Cal shrugged. "She come in herself?" "She did." Cal looked at the car again, then at Ray.
He had the good sense not to say whatever it was he was thinking. He went back to work. Outside through the chain link, Owen from Dale's Auto was watching the lot again. Ray could see him in his peripheral vision.