“You are your father’s son, Octavio,” Tomás said. “I know you love and revere your momma”—he made the Sign of the Cross—“but you are your father’s son. He laid it all on the line for people he loved and people he didn’t even know. Guys like me. Even when he was on the job and didn’t no other cops have his ‘six.’ That’s a lonely, hard place to be. A place I think you’re at right now. But that’s who we are. And good luck trying to back away from your own shadow. You’re your father’s son, Octavio. And that’s a helluva lot more than most people can ever claim to be. So do what you gotta do, and be done with it.”

My eyes filled.

I gave Tomás a hug.

He hugged me back, even though it must have hurt like hell.

In the time and space of that hug, thoughts flashed through my mind of the men and women I’d seen through a sand-blown haze, bloodied and bandaged on stretchers in Afghanistan. Those torn and tattered brothers and sisters who gave all for goddamn nothing. I thought about those solitary three days I was held under arrest for breaking my commanding officer’s nose when he laughingly referred to my single sniper shot (a speck of sand in the eye, a blink that should not have been) that had killed a Taliban leader and his ten-year-old son as a “twofer.” Three days to wallow in the roiling hell of having mistakenly killed a child. Three days to curse God and harshly examine the material of this vessel that my parents had poured their lives into . . .

Until the expertise of my trigger finger was once again requested to clear a path for British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers under Taliban siege.

When Tomás and I released from our hug, Elena and Tatina were standing in the doorway of his room, smiling.

“This,” I said, “goes nowhere.”

“Men,” Elena said with a laugh.

Tatina convinced me that I was not doing my beloved Oldsmobile 442 any special favors by driving her in the snow. “And the salt!” she said. “Min Gud! How much salt do they put on the roads in Michigan? Is it like they actually want your auto to be eaten?”

After a couple phone calls, I found a climate-controlled storage unit in the northwest suburb of Farmington Hills that I felt relatively comfortable with and told my beloved classic muscle car, “Nos vemos en la primavera, mi amor.” Lucky for me, the storage unit was a stone’s throw away from a GMC dealership where the saleswoman looked as if she’d won the lottery when she sold me an SUV for cash in less than five minutes.

I hate quibbling, bartering or begging.

Especially when it comes to cars.

Or sex.