“Oh, okay,” Zack said automatically. “If you tell me how much it was, I’ll pay you b—” He stopped short and stared at Mr. Alvarez. “Wait, what do you mean?”

Mr. Alvarez was still looking down. “I mean just what I said.”

Zack opened and closed his mouth several times. “Was it cracked?”

“Nope.”

“Dry rotted?”

“Nope.”

Zack’s heart was pounding. “Did . . . it snap while you were driving her?”

Mr. Alvarez finally looked up. His face was split in half, he was grinning so hard. “Yup. She only made it ten blocks before something went wrong, but she was purring like a kitten.”

Zack let out a whoop. “I thought she was still a long way from driving condition! How did you get the tires on and off by yourself?”

“Pilar helped. You should have seen her out here with her yellow dishwashing gloves on.”

Zack shook his head. “Good ol’ Mrs. Alvarez. I knew she’d come around eventually.”

“Make no mistake, she still thinks this car is a death trap. But when I made it clear I was going to get her running before I left, no matter what, she gave in.”

“Left?” Zack asked. “Where are you going?”

“She’s making me stay in the hospital for a while. They want to monitor my heart and run some tests. I’ll be gone for a few days, so I figured I needed to get in as much time with my pet project as I could.”

“Thank you,” Zack said. He gave Mr. Alvarez a hug.

The man patted him on the back in a fatherly way. “Now that she’s running, where are you going to take her first?”

Zack’s thoughts went immediately to John. He could just picture it: rolling up to John’s house and driving through the hills, the chrome gleaming in the sun.

He was broken from his fantasy by the sound of chuckling.

“That boy’s got you bad,” Mr. Alvarez said. “It’s written all over your face.”

Zack blushed. “Yeah, I guess he does.”

Mr. Alvarez’s smile shifted into a thoughtful expression. He pulled a rag from his pocket and wiped his hands, which Zack noticed were shaking less than last time.

“Son, I’m going to give you some advice,” Mr. Alvarez said. “You can take it or leave it. I don’t know this boy, and I don’t know what your relationship is like. Maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree.”

“Okay,” Zack said, blinking.

“I worked my entire life before I retired. I started delivering groceries when I was fifteen, pumped gas at eighteen, and sold cars when I was twenty. Then, when I realized that wasn’t the get-rich-quick scheme I thought it’d be, I started working on them. You know what all those jobs had in common?”

“Cars?” Zack asked.