Across the shop, Avery heard something in the Charger's engine block that made her straighten up slowly. She made a note on her clipboard. She looked at the car for a long moment with the expression of a woman who has identified a problem and already knows at the cellular level how to fix it. She didn't look toward the office. She didn't need to, but she knew in the particular way you know things, when you have stopped fighting them, when the wall you've been maintaining with both hands has started coming down one brick at a time, that the distance between where they were and where this was going had gotten considerably shorter, and she wasn't sure anymore that she wanted to stop it.
The charger consumed her. Not in the way that problems consume you. Not with dread or frustration or the particular exhaustion of something that won't cooperate. It consumed her the way a great project consumes a person who is exactly right for it completely willingly with the kind of focus that makes everything outside the work go briefly quiet. It had been 3 weeks since the car arrived and Avery knew its problems.
The way you know a person after long conversation. Not just the obvious things, but the history underneath them. The engine had been partially disassembled by someone who knew what they were doing and then abandoned mid-process, which was in some ways worse than if it had never been touched. There were decisions made inside that block that she had to reverse before she could move forward. The frame had a stress fracture along the rear left rail that the previous inspection had missed entirely.
The electrical system was a generation of improvised fixes stacked on top of each other like geological layers. Each one telling the story of an owner who had solved the immediate problem and handed the longer one to whoever came next. Avery did not hand problems to whoever came next. She started at the beginning and worked forward. By the fourth week of October, she had the engine fully documented, the frame repair scheduled with a body specialist she trusted from her Birmingham days, and a parts list that was longer than she'd initially projected, but more honest.
She presented all of it to Darius on a Tuesday morning, standing at the workbench in Bay1 with the clipboard between them. He looked at the timeline. He looked at the parts cost. He looked at her. Wallace approved the revised estimate, he said.
Called him yesterday. She said he didn't flinch. He didn't flinch at a 40% cost increase. I explained every line item, she said. He asked two questions, both good ones, and then he said to do it right.
She paused. People who love something will pay to have it done correctly. They've usually already paid once to have it done wrong. Darius was quiet for a moment, looking at the car. How long have you been thinking about this?
He said. Restoring cars like this. She didn't answer immediately, not because she didn't have an answer, but because the answer was longer than a workbench conversation usually warranted. My grandfather had a 66 Chevel in his garage from before I was born. She said it sat under a cover for 20 years because he never had the time or the money to restore it properly.
When I was 12, I asked him why he didn't just fix it. He said he was waiting for someone who would do it justice. She looked at the charger. When I was 18, I rebuilt it for him. Took me most of a summer.
Darius looked at her. Did it come out right? He cried. She said simply, "So, yes. " Darius looked at the Charger for a long moment. Then he said quietly.
"My dad has a 71 Chevel. " She turned to him. "In his garage," he said. He's been saying for 15 years he's going to restore it. Every year it's the next thing. Every year something else comes first.
She understood what he wasn't saying. She let the silence hold it. When the charger's done, she said carefully. I'd be glad to look at it. He didn't answer right away.
And when he did, it wasn't about the car. My dad likes you, he said. I like him. She said, "He doesn't like many people easily. Neither does your daughter. " Something shifted in his face at that.
Something unguarded. She had noticed that Lily was the one subject that got through whatever professional management he applied to his expressions. The mention of his daughter moved through him differently, visibly, the way wind moves through something that looks solid until you see how it bends. Lily asked me last week, he said, "If you were going to stay. " Avery held very still. "What did you tell her? " I told her, "I hoped so. " The shop was not quiet.
Terrence was running something in bay 3. The radio was up. Deshawn was on the phone with a parts supplier in the back. But in bay one, between them, with the charger between them and the clipboard between them and all the careful professional architecture they had been building for 8 weeks between them, it was very quiet. She looked at the clipboard.
I'm not going anywhere, she said. He nodded. He took the clipboard. He walked back to the office. She waited until he was inside.
Then she pressed both hands flat on the workbench and looked at the charger and said very quietly to a 60-year-old engine that had heard everything and would tell nothing, "You are making this very difficult. " The engine sensibly said nothing. The call from Robert Hail came on a Thursday morning at 10:42. Darius took it in his office with the door closed, which he rarely did. Avery was in Bay 1. She couldn't hear the words.
She could see through the glass office wall. The set of his shoulders. The specific stillness of a man holding himself very controlled because the alternative was worse. The call lasted 11 minutes. When it was over, Darius set the phone down and sat for a moment with his hands flat on the desk and then he stood up and opened the office door and said with a calmness that was manufactured but convincing, "Terrence, you got a minute. " Terrence went into the office.
The door stayed open this time, but Avery had the air gun running on the Charger's wheel well, and she couldn't catch the words over the noise. She cut the air gun. She caught the last 40 seconds. Terren's voice steady. How much time, Darius?
He's not making a formal offer. He's just making it known he's interested. He mentioned the bank again. Terrence, that's a threat, Darius. He'd call it information.
A pause. Then Terrence quieter. What are we doing, Darius? We're finishing the charger. We're doing the work.
We're not doing anything else right now. Another pause. Terrence. Darius. Darius.
I know. We should tell Avery. The silence after that was different from the other silences. It had a specific weight and shape. Then Darius.