They took the shop's flatbed. Gus drove like a man who had never seen a speed limit he respected, and the wipers shrieked, and the rain turned the road into a gray river. Brandon held the dashboard with both hands.

"He called you," Gus said, over the roar. "Not Marcus. Not a tow service."

"I guess I was the number he had."

"You were the one he thought of." Gus swerved around a stalled sedan. "That means something."

The old pickup sat crooked on the shoulder of the overpass with its hazard lights blinking amber through the rain. A thin figure sat behind the wheel, a cap pulled low, and as the flatbed pulled up, the window rolled down and Walter's weathered face appeared, beaded with water and strangely cheerful.

"Gus Kowalczyk," he said. "Of all people."

"Hayes, you stubborn idiot, this truck is older than my daughter."

"Twenty-eight years, as a matter of fact. She's a very good daughter."

"I meant your truck."

"I know." Walter's eyes crinkled. "I wouldn't dream of insulting your family."

Within ten minutes, Gus had the hood up under a big black umbrella while Brandon crouched beside him with a flashlight. The old engine was coated in decades of grime, but the layout was familiar. Gus poked and prodded. He wiggled a connector. He tapped a relay with the handle of a screwdriver.

"Hear that?" he said to Brandon, quietly.

"Hear what?"

"Turn the key."

Walter, from the cab, cranked the starter. The old motor coughed, hesitated, caught for half a second, and died. Brandon listened. There was a rhythm in the failure, a hitch, like a man running with a pebble in his shoe.

"It's firing," Brandon said slowly. "But something's late. It's not getting enough—" He stopped. "Fuel?"

Gus looked at him for a long moment. "Go on."

"The pump's weak. It's not building pressure. It catches because there's residual fuel in the line, then runs dry." He heard himself say it and felt a shiver of surprise. "Right?"

"Right." Gus set down the screwdriver. "The pump's failing. It'll take twenty minutes to swap, if I had a pump. Which I don't. But I've got a spare in the flatbed from a job last week that matches." He glanced at Walter, who had climbed out and was standing under the umbrella with his cap dripping. "Hayes, I hate to say it, but this boy has an ear."

"I know," said Walter quietly. "I thought he might."

They worked in the rain for half an hour. Brandon held the light. Gus did the work, narrating every step in his gravelly voice, and the old truck's engine gradually came back to life, first with a stammer and then with a steady, rumbling purr. When it finally caught and held, Walter laid his palm flat on the fender, and his face went soft in the glow of the hazard lights.

"There she is," he murmured. "Good girl."

Brandon looked at the old man, and then at the truck, and understood something he could not have put into words. It was not a beautiful machine. It was dented, faded, held together with tape. But it had taken Walter Hayes everywhere for twenty-eight years, and he loved it the way a person loves a faithful dog.

"Thank you, both," said Walter. He extended a hand to Gus, then to Brandon. "I wouldn't have had the nerve to ask anyone else."

"You didn't ask," said Brandon. "You called."

"It's the same thing, I suppose." Walter smiled. "It took me many years to learn that. Margaret used to say I'd rather freeze than ask a stranger for a coat."

"You're not a stranger."

For a moment, the old man did not answer. The rain tapped the umbrella. Down the road a truck rumbled by, throwing a wave of gray spray, and above them a wedge of geese went south in a ragged line.

"No," said Walter Hayes, very gently. "I don't suppose I am."

Two Chairs

On a cold Thursday morning, a week before the gala, Walter did something he had not done in two years. He asked someone if he could come with them.

"To the clinic?" Brandon said, turning from the sink in his mother's kitchen with a dish towel in one hand. "Mr. Hayes, are you sure? It's not a pleasant place. It's three hours of beeping and plastic chairs."

"I know what it is."

"My mother would be mortified. She'd want to put on lipstick."

"Then I'll wait in the hall while she does." Walter stood in the doorway with his cap in his hands. He had put on a clean shirt and, Brandon noticed, shaved with unusual care. "I've been thinking about Margaret all month. About the hospital. I think I need to sit in a room like that again, with someone who is going through it. I think it's unfinished."