Angela touched Noah's shoulder. "We should go home," she told him. "You have homework, and I need to make dinner." Victor almost asked them to stay, then caught himself. He had held their time without considering the rest of their day, just as he had treated Angela's work as something that existed for his convenience.
"Thank you for bringing him," he said. "I know it took rearranging things. If the house manager gave you trouble, tell me." Angela nodded cautiously. "We managed, sir. But I appreciate that."
Noah lingered for a moment by the Ferrari. It was no longer trembling with a problem nobody understood. The quiet heat rising from the engine bay felt different now, as though the car had exhausted a long complaint and could finally rest. He looked at Victor. "Could I hear it again someday?
After they finish checking everything?" Victor answered without hesitation. "Yes. If your mother agrees. And the next time, I'll make sure we explain what we're doing instead of just asking you to watch."
On the drive home, Noah talked less than he had the previous evening. He held the notebook in his lap and rubbed a thumb along its worn spine. Angela watched him at a red light. "What's going on in that head?" she asked. He considered for several seconds before answering.
"Dad was in that room before me," he said. "He touched the same car. He knew Mr. Edward. And I never knew that until today."
Angela's hands tightened around the steering wheel. "Your father had a lot of stories," she said. "I wish we'd had more time for all of them."
At home she made rice, vegetables, and chicken in a pan whose handle had been repaired with a mismatched screw. Noah finished his homework before taking out the notebook again. He opened to the drawing of the Ferrari and asked his mother whether Marcus ever missed the shop downtown. She sat beside him and told him that his father missed the people more than the building.
"He liked having other mechanics to argue with," she said. "Especially when somebody found a better idea. He didn't always enjoy being corrected, but he'd come home talking about what he'd learned."
"Greg apologized today," Noah said. Angela smiled. "I heard." "Dad would have liked that, wouldn't he?" She thought about Marcus at the kitchen table, carefully explaining why being wrong was not the worst thing that could happen.
"He would have," she said. "He'd probably have told Greg the same thing he always told you: now that you know better, do better." Noah wrote the sentence in the margin of a blank page. Then he closed the book and placed it beside his bed, where he could reach it in the morning.
Victor remained at the garage long after the Carters left. He had the old photograph on his desk, the one showing Edward and the mechanics outside the downtown shop. With the notebook handwriting fresh in mind, he recognized the young man standing beside the Ferrari. Marcus had the same attentive