The door opened and Sarah came out, a pad of paper and our checkbook in her hand. She took the wicker chair next to mine.

“How is she?” I asked.

“She’s good,” Sarah said. “You know she’s got a lecture tonight, and I gave her lots of choices. I said she could stay home if she wanted to, or you or I could drive her down to Mackenzie, wait for her until her lecture is over and bring her home.”

It had been a week. We insisted Angie take a break from classes. Sarah spoke to the registrar, explained all that Angie had been through, and was told that she could take as long as she needed to get back on her feet. After a couple of days, she was getting antsy, and now, seven days later, she was sick of hanging around the house and wanted to get back to her regular routine.

“What did she decide?” I asked.

“She said she wants the car. She’s going to drive herself to her lecture tonight, drive herself home.”

“Oh,” I said. Angie might be ready for that, but were Sarah and I?

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “Oh.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I’d like to keep her home for the rest of her life,” Sarah said. “How do you feel?”

“I think your position is a reasonable one.”

We were both quiet for a moment. Sarah broke the silence. “I think we should let her.”

“I guess. But I think she should take the Camry. Until we’re absolutely sure that starting problem is fixed on the Virtue.”

“Agreed.”

“And you know,” I said, going slowly, “if you’re worried, we could sort of follow her along, make sure she got down to the university okay.”

Sarah eyed me. “Follow her.” It was a question, not a command.

“It was just a thought. I was trying to think of a way to make this easier for you.”

Sarah thought about it. “It’s not that I’m not tempted,” she said, “but I don’t think so.” She turned her attention to the checkbook, which she was leafing through, frowning.

“Speaking of the Virtue,” she said. “We’re going to be paying it off for quite a while. If we put, say, $300 a month down on the line of credit, it’s going to take us nearly thirty months or so to pay it off.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“We don’t really have another $300 a month at the moment,” Sarah said. “Not with all of Angie’s college expenses, and we need to be socking money away now for Paul, he’s going to want to go someplace.”

“The car seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said. “It seemed like such a good deal.”