“Are you sure?”
“I’m old, not magical. But yes, I’m sure.”
Three days earlier, I had taken the car to a nearby repair shop for a routine inspection. The owner, a woman named Maris Cole, had checked it herself.
“The engine is strong,” she told me. “But one ignition coil is weakening. It may last six months, or it may fail tomorrow.”
Apparently, it had chosen tomorrow.
I knew the repair was not complicated, but my knees no longer enjoyed kneeling beside engines. So after dropping Nell at school the next morning, I drove back to the shop.
Maris was not behind the counter.
A young mechanic stood there spinning a pen between his fingers. His name patch read BRENT.
He looked at my gray hair, then at the flowered purse hanging from my arm.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he said. “What seems to be the trouble?”
