Chương 1
"The first thing my grandfather did after closing the study door was ask Ava to put the SUV keys on his desk.
For a second, nobody moved.
Ava stood beside one of the leather chairs with her purse still hanging from her shoulder, staring at him as though she had misunderstood.
Mom recovered first.
“Dad, this is getting ridiculous.”
Grandpa lowered himself into his chair without taking his eyes off Ava.
“The keys.”
Ava’s fingers tightened around the strap of her purse.
“I don’t have them on me.”
Grandpa tapped the desk once with his index finger.
“You drove here.”
“I mean, they’re in my bag.”
“Then you have them.”
Her cheeks flushed.
She dug through the purse hard enough to make a lipstick tube fall onto the rug.
Nobody bent to pick it up.
When she finally pulled out the key fob, she held it for a moment before placing it on the desk.
Grandpa slid it toward himself.
The sound of plastic against polished wood seemed louder than it should have.
Mom folded her arms.
“Are we seriously confiscating a car from Ava in the middle of dinner?”
I almost said, It was never Ava’s car.
The words reached the back of my teeth and stopped there.
I had spent so many years correcting obvious things that I had developed a strange exhaustion around facts.
Sometimes telling the truth felt like explaining gravity.
Grandpa unlocked his phone.
“Amelia, sit down.”
I took the chair nearest the bookcase.
Mom remained standing.
Ava did too.
Grandpa glanced between them.
“You may want to sit.”
“I’m fine,” Mom said.
Grandpa gave the smallest shrug.
“Suit yourself.”
He opened an app and rotated the phone toward us.
The map I had seen in the dining room filled the screen, but now there were dates listed beneath it.
Trip histories.
Mileage.
Stops.
Times.
I leaned forward.
I had known Grandpa installed some kind of theft-recovery system because he had mentioned it at the dealership, but I had assumed it was the ordinary factory tracking service.
I had never seen the records.
Ava had.
Or at least, she understood what they meant immediately.
Her face changed.
Not dramatically.
It was more like a tiny collapse around her mouth.
Grandpa scrolled.
“The SUV was delivered to Amelia on August fourteenth with nineteen miles on the odometer.”
He looked at me.
“You drove it home, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And anywhere else?”
“I stopped for coffee the next morning.”
I felt stupid admitting that under interrogation-like circumstances.
Grandpa nodded.
“That matches.”
Mom made a disgusted sound.
“You’re checking where your own granddaughter buys coffee now?”
“No.”
Grandpa scrolled again.
“I’m checking why a vehicle purchased for one granddaughter has accumulated one thousand, three hundred and eighty-seven miles while she’s been taking Uber.”
That shut Mom up for perhaps three seconds.
Then she pointed at the phone.
“A tracker doesn’t tell you who was driving.”
“No,” Grandpa said.
“It tells me where the vehicle went.”
He tapped one entry.
“Greenville.”
Another.
“Charlotte.”
Another.
“A shopping center in Rock Hill.”
He continued.
“An apartment complex in Fort Mill four times, including twice after midnight.”
Ava’s eyes flicked toward Mom.
That tiny movement interested me more than the map.
Mom saw me notice.
Her expression hardened.
“People drive places.”
Grandpa looked at her.
“That is generally what cars are for, Diane.”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed.
Grandpa had a dry way of making irritation sound like a weather report.
Nobody laughed now.
He opened another trip.
“This one concerns me.”
Ava stepped closer to the desk.
“Why?”
“Because yesterday you told us you drove toward the edge of town to inspect the farmhouse property.”
“I said I drove that direction.”
“You said you went out there for work.”
“I was nearby.”
Grandpa enlarged the map.
“No, you weren’t.”
Ava swallowed.
The route showed the SUV leaving our neighborhood shortly after eleven in the morning, heading north instead of west, then stopping for nearly three hours at the same apartment complex in Fort Mill.
After that, it went to a liquor store, a gas station, and a restaurant near the interstate before returning home after six.
The farmhouse was nowhere near the route.
Mom leaned over the desk.
“So she changed her plans.”
Grandpa’s eyes moved to her slowly.
“Why are you answering for her?”
Mom straightened.
“I’m not.”
“You have answered nearly every question I’ve asked her.”
“That’s because you’re cornering her.”
“I asked where she drove a car.”
“You’re treating her like a criminal.”
Grandpa removed his glasses and wiped them with the cloth he kept in his shirt pocket.
That usually meant he was angry enough to distrust his own face.
I had seen him do it once when a contractor tried to charge him twice for replacing the same section of roof.
“I haven’t accused anyone of a crime,” he said.
“Yet you both seem remarkably worried that I might.”
Ava finally sat.
She sank into the chair beside Mom and stared at her knees.
The anger I had carried for two weeks shifted.
It did not disappear.
It became more complicated.
Ava looked younger when she was frightened.
That irritated me too.
She was twenty-two, not twelve.
She had mastered looking vulnerable at exactly the moments consequences approached.
I had watched it work on teachers, relatives, boyfriends, managers, and especially our mother.
Grandpa opened a second screen.
“This is the mileage alert I received three nights ago.”
I frowned.
“Why would mileage trigger an alert?”
“Because I set one.”
He looked at me.
“I expected you to put some miles on it commuting, visiting friends, living your life.”
His voice softened briefly.
“But not this many this quickly.”
Something painful pressed under my ribs.
It was such a simple sentence.
Living your life.
May you like
That was what he thought he had bought me.
Not leather seats or a panoramic roof or a white SUV that looked more expensive than anything I would have chosen for myself.
