and Imogene Johnson had insisted on keeping the pieces, because she said it was the only time anybody had broken something trying to thank them, and she wanted to remember. When Starla made sales manager she had offered him any car on the lot at cost. He had said no. When she made general sales manager she had tried again, and he had said no again, and then he had said, "Starla, if you want to do something, Shawnda's always short a tutor," and she had trained, and she had tutored for three years on Thursday nights until the hours here made it impossible. She had not been back in five years. She had told herself she would go back when things slowed down. Things had not slowed down.
"So it's for Imogene," she said now, in the office, with the floor going on without her below. "The car."
"She got her license Thursday."
Starla stared at him. "Imogene? Imogene drove?"
"Second try. Parallel parking got her the first time." He could not keep the pride out of his voice and did not try. "Seventy-one. She learned in Lyda Spurlock's Buick in the church lot. I'm done driving, Starla, so she's going to drive. And she's never had a new thing in her whole life, and I want her to have one."
"The Escape."
"I want her up high so she can see. I want it to stop itself if she doesn't. I want the gas to be the skinny one on the right and I want the man who sells it to me to tell me what all is on that sheet in the window, because I can't read it, and I'm not going to put my wife in a car I can't read."
Starla closed her eyes for a moment.
"I'm sorry," she said. "About him. Kade. I'm going to deal with it."
"Deal with what?"
"Mr. Johnson. He walked away from you. I watched him do it. He thought you were a—" She stopped.
"An old man in a ratty jacket who wasn't going to buy anything."
"Yes."
"Well, he was wrong," Arvel said mildly. He drank some of his coffee. "But he wasn't wrong for the reason you think."
"What does that mean?"
Arvel set the mug down on her desk, carefully, feeling for the edge with his other hand.
"Starla," he said, "how long has that boy been working for you?"
"Seven months," Starla said. "Why?"
"Does he write his own notes?"
She opened her mouth and closed it.