"I want her to have everything she never had," he said quietly.
"Maybe what she wants is to see you enjoy what she gave you," Isaiah answered. "You ever think about that?"
At four o'clock a covered transport vehicle turned slowly onto the street. William assumed it belonged to a neighbor until it stopped in front of Christina's house and an attendant stepped out carrying a delivery folder. Behind him another employee checked the clearance around the driveway and lowered the rear ramp according to the delivery plan. William rose from the porch chair, confused.
Christina appeared in the doorway with a birthday card in her hand. She was wearing her gold earrings now, the ones Samuel had given her years earlier, and she stood with Anna on one side and Isaiah's little daughter holding her apron on the other. The expression on her face was neither mischievous nor uncertain. It was the quiet delight of someone who had kept a good secret all the way to the end.
"William," she said, "come over here a minute."
He approached the steps. "Grandma, what have you done?"
"Something a grandmother ought to be allowed to do once in a while. Open your card."
He took it carefully and slid out the folded paper. At first he saw the ordinary birthday greeting and a few lines in Christina's handwriting, the kind of blessing she gave him every year. Then he unfolded the second sheet and found the blue sports car he had drawn as a child, complete with wheels too large, a crooked windshield, and Samuel's careful line of tape where the paper had once been torn.
William's face changed. He stared at the drawing and then at Christina, unable to speak. Behind him the transport driver released the cover from a vehicle gleaming in the sunlight, and deep metallic blue appeared beneath the cloth.
There were no fireworks and no cameras. There was only the low sound of the transport ramp, a little girl's delighted gasp, and the sight of a car whose color matched a crayon drawing made more than twenty-five years earlier. The Porsche rolled down the ramp under the driver's careful control and came to rest at the edge of Christina's driveway.
William turned toward it slowly. He looked back at the drawing, then at the car, and for an instant his adult face held the open astonishment Christina remembered from childhood. It was as though the years between had folded inward and left the eight-year-old boy standing there with his repaired drawing.
"Grandma," he whispered. "You didn't."
"I did," she said. "The inspection is finished. The documents are in order. The insurance people know it's a birthday present, and nobody is letting you drive anything until the paperwork is properly completed. Your grandfather would have insisted."
William laughed once, a shaken sound that turned into something perilously close to a sob. Then he looked at her again. "How could you do this? This is too much."