Thursday morning, she swung the company delivery truck out the bay door of Softco’s east shop. The complex had grown from its humble beginnings as a single bay garage to an impressive complex of three modern machine shops, two warehouses and a ten-person office. There was an apartment over the office, where Crystal had lived since her husband, Simon, died two years ago.

But she wasn’t thinking about that today. In particular, she wasn’t stressing about how long a twenty-eight-year-old woman could live above her parents’ business without looking pathetic. Today, she was headed for the speedway in Charlotte and the Dean Grosso garage to be part of the pulsating hive of activity surrounding a premier NASCAR event.

She pulled the truck onto Deerborne Street and headed north toward the interstate. When she got up to speed, she popped a vintage Creedence CD into the player, in the mood to get nostalgic. Her father had played Creedence, Pink Floyd and Nazareth in the truck when Crystal was a child riding along on deliveries, and she still had a soft spot in her heart for classic rock.

She toured past the Rondal Bicycle Factory and the Pearson Furniture Warehouse before traffic increased and the landscape turned to retail businesses. The bright red, Treatsy-Sweetsy ice-cream parlor sign rotated slowly in the distance, its stylized, red TS towering above the surrounding buildings. Crystal could almost hear her childhood voice begging her dad to stop for a butterscotch cone.

She smiled to herself as Creedence rasped on about the calm before the storm.

She thought about the forty-odd dollars in her pocket. She’d planned to treat herself to a pizza on Saturday night, which would leave her with just enough for groceries until her next Softco paycheck. If she splurged on a cone, she’d have to compromise somewhere else.