“But I have my registration… plus some other papers… there are all sorts of numbers, and I thought maybe, just maybe you could make me a new set and I could be on my way. This sale could make my year, Mr…” She has forgotten. He isn’t offended. Moore is almost as common as Smith or Jones. Besides, she’s upset. Losing your keys will do that. He’s seen it a hundred times.

“Moore. But I answer just as well to Pete.”

“Can you help me, Mr Moore? Or is there someone in the service department who can?”

Old Johnny Damon’s back there and he’d be happy to help her, but she wouldn’t make her appointment in Fryeburg, that’s for sure.

“We can get you new car keys, but it’s liable to take at least twenty-four hours and maybe more like forty-eight,” he says.

She looks at him from her brimming eyes, which are a velvety brown, and lets out a dismayed cry. “Damn it! Damn it!”

An odd thought comes to Pete then: she looks like a girl he knew a long time ago. Not well, they hadn’t known her well, but well enough to save her life. Josie Rinkenhauer, her name had been.

“I knew it!” Trish says, no longer trying to keep that husky thickness out of her voice. “Oh boy, I just knew it!” She turns away from him, now beginning to cry in earnest.

Pete walks after her and takes her gently by the shoulder. “Wait, Trish. Wait just a minute.”

That’s a slip, saying her name when she hasn’t given it to him, but she’s too upset to realize they haven’t been properly introduced, so it’s okay.

“Where did you come from?” he asks. “I mean, you’re not from Bridgton, are you?”

“No,” she says. “Our office is in Westbrook. Dennison Real Estate. We’re the ones with the lighthouse?”