They were walking along Sweetwater’s main street, making for the garage on the edge of the village where Lizzie had left her car last night. There were no sidewalks, but there wasn’t much traffic. Lizzie had heard that there was a good farmer’s market on the other side of the village, so maybe that was where you’d find whatever traffic congestion a place this size got.

“Probably still sleeping,” Siobhan said. “Were you here when that Liam fellow pulled out a tin whistle, or had you already gone?”

“No, I was here. He was good.”

“And he must know a thousand tunes. The three of them were still going at it when I went to bed.”

“Did Con hit on you?”

Siobhan laughed. “Hardly. He’s only got eyes for cute punky fiddlers who dress all in black.”

“I’ve got red shoes and socks on,” Lizzie told her.

“Hence the punky.”

“I thought that was my hair.”

Siobhan eyed Lizzie’s mix of bright red and black hair.

“No, that’s just fun,” she said. She waited a moment, then asked, “So you don’t fancy him even a little?”

“I’d fancy him a lot if we weren’t in the same band. But that’s a rule I won’t break again. It’s just gets too damn messy.”

“And I agree with you. Though, if it was true love, I’d throw the rule book away.”

Lizzie laughed. “I think it’s more hormonal love.”

“Nothing wrong with that.”

“Nothing at all,” Lizzie agreed. “Unless you’re in the same band.”

They reached the garage then, and both stopped to take it in. Lizzie’s heart sank. It looked much worse in the daylight than it had last night. All the metal signage was fighting off an intrusion of rust, the windows were almost impenetrable from their thick coating of dust, and the building was in desperate need of a paint job. There were stacks of old tires to one side of the garage bay door and machine parts heaped in unruly piles wherever you turned. The field beyond the tires was littered with junked cars. Old gas pumps, rusting and disused, stood amidst clusters of dead weeds that had pushed up through the concrete all last summer before they’d died in the fall.

“You left your car here?” Siobhan asked.

“Not another word,” Lizzie told her.