After one in the morning, Laura woke them.
Brent had been drinking.
Rick remembered the bottle.
He remembered Laura telling Brent to stop.
He remembered Brent laughing and insisting he had driven the lake road a million times.
Then the car started going too fast.
Noah became frightened.
The Mercedes left the road.
There was a huge impact.
They hit a mailbox.
Then a silver car parked in a driveway.
Someone inside the house turned on a light.
Brent backed up.
And drove away.
“Did anyone get hurt?”
Rick told me Noah’s booster seat broke and he hit his face against the door.
His lip bled.
Laura told the boys that if anyone asked, Noah had fallen from the swings.
I remembered the scab.
I remembered believing her.
Then Noah returned to the table.
He saw Chompy.
The scream he made was pure joy.
He ran across the diner, hugged that tiny dinosaur against his face, laughed and cried at the same time.
I picked him up.
Rick looked at me.
“Dad, are you mad?”
“Not at you.”
I got them home exactly on time.
When Laura opened the door and saw Chompy in Noah’s hands, her face changed.
“Where did he get that?”
“Found it.”
“In the shop.”
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
Neither of us said anything else.
The next morning, I called an old friend.
Denise Okafor.
We had been in shop class together in high school.
She eventually went to law school and became a family attorney.
I told her everything.
The Mercedes.
The paint.
The reflector.
The booster seat.
Chompy.
The crash data.
Rick’s account.
She became very quiet.
Then she said,
“Stop working on that car.”
She told me not to throw away a single damaged part.
Fortunately, I hadn’t.
The hood.
Bumper.
Radiator.
Wheel.
Everything was still stacked in the shop.
“You need to call the police.”
So I did.
Detective Lorraine Ramirez came to my garage with a crime-scene technician.
They photographed everything.
The silver paint.
The orange reflector.
The car seat.
The crash data.
Then Ramirez made a call.
When she returned, she told me there had indeed been a report.
At 1:45 that morning, a homeowner on Lakeshore Drive had reported someone hitting his mailbox and a parked silver Honda Accord.
He saw a dark sedan reverse and speed away.
The Honda had been totaled.
Its owner was seventy-four.
His wife needed dialysis several times a week.
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