Lars had called in the afternoon to say that he was back with the Stanley, and did she want a ride? She’d been so excited she nearly forgot to ask him for directions to his new place.

It was less than five minutes away, out St. Alban’s Bay Road a mile and a half, to Weekend Street, a narrow lane about three houses long. Lars, having concluded the sale of his hobby farm, had rented a very modest cottage at the bottom of the lane. It was surrounded by middle-size trees and a lot of brush, but it had a big yard. A driveway led behind the house to a small red barn.

Beside the barn was a long, low, white trailer, like a multihorse trailer, except this one had no windows. It was hitched to Lars’s dirty blue pickup truck, which apparently hadn’t gone to the buyer of his farm.

Betsy steered her car onto the weedy lawn, got out, and went through the open double doors of the barn. Close up, the barn was relatively new, sided vertically with aluminum “boards” and floored with cement. The oil stains on the floor and the big electric winch that ran on an overhead rail announced that this shed was no stranger to people who worked on engines. A workbench along one wall had a vise on it and a pegboard above it with the outline of numerous tools, though the tools presently on it didn’t always match the outlines.

Lars and Jill were both there. Jill, in jeans and windbreaker, had her hands in her back pockets and a worried look in her eye. Lars was just grinning.

The backside of the old car was higher than their heads, a rich, gleaming green. There was no rear bumper, and the single taillight, near the left fender, was a brass oil lamp with a round red eye.

The tires seemed tall, perhaps because they were narrow. Betsy asked, “What if you get a flat? Do you have a spare?”