"I regret that it went as far as it did," I said. "I don't regret refusing to sell the car. And I don't regret asking people to prove what they were saying."
"She thought being president meant she could decide everything."
"She thought she could decide things outside the authority the neighbors had actually given her," I said. "That's where people get into trouble."
Tate glanced at me, smiling. "You know, you can answer a simple question in fewer words than that."
"Your mother used to say the same thing."
We laughed, and he turned onto the road toward Briarwood Glen. The subdivision entrance looked ordinary now, with the fresh shrubs the residents had planted in spring and the lighting repaired after years of complaints. The sign was still there, and so were the houses, the mailboxes, and the pool. What had changed was harder to photograph.
People no longer lowered their voices when the HOA president walked by. They went to meetings and disagreed and asked for receipts. The association did not always make the choices I preferred, and I did not expect it to. It had become a place where I could lose an argument without worrying that losing would cost me my house or my car.
Tate pulled into our driveway and shut off the engine. The metal ticked as it cooled. A cardinal that had settled near the mailbox startled into the pines, and the porch light came on above the front door. For a few seconds neither of us got out.
"Dad," Tate said, "do you think we'll still have the Mustang when I'm your age?"
I looked across the hood at the house, the garage, and the quiet street where two officers had once stood trying to understand a forged purchase agreement. I thought about the car's old metal, the parts we had replaced, and the work that would inevitably need doing again. A machine lasts because somebody cares enough to maintain it, and a family lasts in different ways for much the same reason.
"If you take care of it," I said, "there's no reason you shouldn't."
He smiled and climbed out. I stayed in the passenger seat another moment before following him. Inside the garage, under the bright overhead light, he opened the glove box to put away the registration and touched the brass plaque with the back of his finger.
"For my two favorite men," he read softly.
I felt the old familiar ache, but it no longer knocked the breath out of me. I remembered Marguerite on a Saturday afternoon, standing in an oil-stained shirt beside our unfinished car, telling Tate that working hard on something was a kind of promise to the person who would inherit it. I remembered her laughing when I dropped a bolt into a place neither of us could reach. I remembered the night she had been too tired to help but brought us sandwiches anyway.