So she did.
She read him the whole thing. Not the summary; the whole thing. She read the purchase price and the trade allowance and the doc fee and the sales tax, and the paragraph about the arbitration clause, and the paragraph about the odometer, and the federal privacy notice in its long gray sentences, and the warranty terms, which went on for three pages. She read in the voice she used for everything in that building, steady and clear and a little dry, and she did not skip and she did not stumble, not once, not on any word, not even on the ones that would have stopped her cold in that basement room twenty years before. Kade sat across the desk and listened. Gert stood in the doorway and listened. At some point Dwain came up the steps to ask about a trade and stood behind Gert and did not ask.
When she got to the end, Arvel said, "Read me that last line again."
"The undersigned acknowledges that he or she has read and understands the terms of this agreement."
"Well," Arvel said, "I didn't read it. But I understand it." He held out his hand, and she put the pen in it, and guided his hand to the line with her own, and he signed his name, large and slanting, about a quarter inch above where it should have gone.
There was only one problem, and Tavis apologized for it twice. The Escape had come off the truck with a single key fob. The second one had to be ordered and programmed in the service department, and service could not promise it before Tuesday.
Kade drove the Escape to Locust Street at a quarter past four with Arvel beside him. The S-10 stayed behind on the used lot with a yellow grease-pencil number on its windshield. Arvel had stood beside it for a minute before they left, with one hand on the hood, and said something to it that Kade did not hear and did not ask about.
Imogene Johnson was on the porch before they had the engine off. She was a small woman in a cardigan and slacks with a cap of white hair, and she came down the steps holding the rail and stopped at the bottom of them and looked at the silver car in front of her house and then at her husband getting out of the passenger side, and Kade saw her understand that he had not driven it there, and would not drive anything again, and that this was what the day had been about.