Not staring, exactly, but watching. The way he always watched whenever something happened at Ray's shop that he couldn't quite figure out or fit into the version of Ray he had decided to believe in. Ray didn't look over. He finished the oil change, signed off on the ticket, and sent the car on its way.
At 5:30, he was alone again. He stood in the middle of the empty shop and looked at it. 12 years of work in these walls. Every crack in the floor.
Every grease mark on the ceiling that he'd never quite gotten off. His daughter's old stool still in the corner. He hadn't moved it. He wasn't sure he ever would.
He thought about what Nadia had said. She gets that from me, I think. The way someone says something about themselves without excusing it, without explaining it, just acknowledging it like weather. He thought about what he had said back.
He had not told a stranger that in a long time. He had not told most people at all. He went to the corner and picked up the stepladder. He climbed up to the sign above the door and looked at the broken letter, the E in Decker.
It had been dark for 3 weeks. The bulb was just loose. That was all. A loose bulb.
He tightened it. It came on. He climbed down and looked at the sign from the outside. Decker Auto.
Both words lit. Clean. He stood there a minute in the cooling evening air. From next door, the other lot was empty.
Dale and Owen were gone for the day. Good. He locked up and drove home. He was halfway through dinner when Nadia called again.
He answered before the second ring. "I wanted to tell you the part arrived at the supplier," she said. "I called ahead. I hope that's not strange."
"It's not," he said. "I also..." She stopped. A very slight pause.
The kind that meant the next sentence had been thought about. "I referred a colleague. He has a fleet of vehicles that need regular service. I gave him your number. I hope that's all right."
Ray set down his fork. "You didn't have to do that." "I know." She said it the same way he had said it to Cora the night before. Simple.
Final. He was quiet for a moment. "Nadia." "Yes."
"Why did you really come in today? The vibration wasn't serious enough to need same-day attention. You knew that." The line was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, "I wanted to see what kind of man my daughter was talking about." He let that sit. "And?" he said.
"And I found out," she said. She said good night. He said good night. She hung up.
He sat at the table for a while, not thinking about anything specific, just sitting in the quiet of the house, which was usually a hard kind of quiet, and noticing that tonight it was a slightly different kind. Not easier. Not harder. Just different.