“Parents are funny,” Bruce said. “Whether they’re still together, or separated, or one of them’s passed on, they don’t want to admit to their kids that they might have a love life.”

“You mean sex life,” Katie said, and briefly shivered.

“I was trying to be delicate. Moms and dads are allowed to have a life, you know.”

“I know,” she said. “I wish she’d just be open about it.”

“So, you want to head out for another lesson tonight?” he asked. “Say, around midnight?”

Katie sighed. “I don’t know if there’s any point.”

“Come on. You’re getting better each time. That was a damn fine three-point turn you did night before last. If you can do one of those in Finny, you can do one in any car, believe me. And those little rodents they call Arrivals, they don’t even need to do a three-pointer, they’re so fucking small they can turn on a dime.” He grimaced. “Pardon my French.”

The corner of Katie’s mouth turned up. “Yeah, I’m just a fucking impressionable youngster.”

“Noted,” Bruce said. “So what do you mean, there’s no point?”

Sullenly, Katie said, “I had another huge fight with my mom this morning about taking the test and finally getting my license and she wouldn’t even consider it.”

“She doesn’t know how good a driver you already are,” he said.

“Wouldn’t matter if she did. She says the day’s nearly here where no one is going to need to know how to drive.”

Bruce’s face softened. “You know where she’s coming from on that.”

When she’d last visited, she had told Bruce, ever so briefly, what had happened to her father.

“I was going through some of my old issues of the Garrett Post and saw the story,” Bruce said. “It was up on Pelican Point?”

“Yeah. Some lady, whose grandson got his bike fixed at my dad’s place, asked if he could come out and jump her car. Like, not jump over it, but get the battery going.”

“I’m familiar with the concept.”

“He’d worked, like, twelve hours that day and was just about to come home, but the lady, Hilda Steinway, in case you know her—”

“I do not.”

“Anyway, she’s, like, seventy-five—not that that’s really old or anything.”

Bruce grinned. “It sure feels fucking old, let me tell you.”

“Anyway, she has all these health issues, and she’s always checking to see if her car will start, and when it didn’t, she went into a panic, thinking, what if something happens to me and I need to drive myself to the doctor’s?”

“She hadn’t heard about ambulances?”

“Hilda figures, where she lives, it takes them too long to get there.”

“So she thinks, if she gets a heart attack, she’s gonna drive herself to the ER?”