Chapter 2

The Alfa Romeo was the real thing. It was not an American car, but what did that matter? Every line reflected pure passion. Every rev of the engine was nothing except the sound of joy. In fact, that was all Alfa Romeos usually had going for them. Most serious gearheads and car collectors avoided them because they were usually nothing more than a mess wrapped in a headache. Edwin didn’t care about that. He would turn heads when he drove the Spider down the street. People would notice him as he raced by.

Edwin circled the mansion once, unconcerned with the massive, ornate building. The estate sale would be starting in about an hour, and if he wanted to, he could take his thirty thousand dollars and buy a famous painting or rare books or whatever else it was that people were supposed to buy at massive liquidation sales. But none of that other stuff mattered to him. He could buy paintings and books and furniture and the pieces of other people’s lives elsewhere.

But he had never found a Romeo Spider like this one.

He had never found a piece of his own life sedately sitting in another man’s garage.

Edwin could have owned the Alfa Romeo Spider far, far sooner. If his life had gone as planned, he might have owned one even fifteen years earlier. But things had not gone as planned. In fact, his entire life had gone so far off the rails, he never expected to find the track again. One mistake had snowballed into a darkness so deep, he wasn’t sure he would ever see light again. He had painstakingly crawled back to his previous position, beginning with his job at the pharmacy and culminating, finally, in the purchase that had been eluding him for so long.

When he sat behind the wheel of the Spider, he could believe that it was possible to wrestle back lost time, claim it again, and give himself a second chance.

“How she handle?” Roger asked when Edwin returned to the garage.

“Like a dream.”

“Good, good. I thought she would.”

Edwin opened the door and made himself exit the car. “So, do I give the money to you or…?”

Roger laughed. “I’m just the grease monkey around here. I’m glad to see she’s going to a good home, though.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw your smile when you got behind the wheel. You appreciate her for what she is.”

Edwin cast an admiring glance over the Spider once again. “That I do.”

“I don’t know if they mentioned this in the listing, but I think it’s only fair to tell you that she’s been in an accident before.”

Edwin frowned. That hadn’t been mentioned. In fact, the listing had stressed that the Spider was in mint condition, as if it had just been shipped from the factory that morning. The hobby car of a millionaire, it never left sunny Southern California and had spent most of its existence as a mere showroom piece, not a vehicle that had really been used. In fact, it had under one thousand miles.

“What sort of accident?”

“A fender bender back in sixty-two. Must have been just three or four days after they bought the thing. But they smashed up the front part real good. Here. And here.” Roger pointed with an oil-stained finger to the bumper of the car. “They sent it right back to the factory to get it fixed.”

Edwin arched his brow. “The factory? In Italy?”

“Yep.”

“And it came back as good as new?”

The light faded a bit from Roger’s weathered eyes, but he nodded. “Yeah. Good as new. Anyway, the old man wouldn’t let anybody drive it after that. He took it to a few shows and hired it out to a few of those Hollywood types, but other than that, it’s sat right here in this garage.”

Edwin shook his head. “It’s a shame. This car shouldn’t be kept locked up like this.”

“No, it shouldn’t.” Roger nodded toward the large house. “You’ll find Mr. Gifford up in the house. He’s the one in charge of all this. I’m sure he’ll take your money.”

Edwin turned to the door, but he paused before leaving the garage, looking over his shoulder to admire the car once again. It looked different in the garage’s shadows, though Edwin couldn’t put his finger on how. It looked like it was waiting for him. Like it didn’t want to let him go.

“She’ll still be here when you get back,” Roger said.

Edwin shook his head and laughed. “I guess I’m being a bit silly. I’ll be right back for her.”

He stepped into the sunlight, and the chill that had been resting on the back of his neck vanished. If he had been thirty years younger, he might have skipped up the winding cement path to the towering white house. But he wasn’t that young anymore, so he settled for jogging in his eagerness to complete the transaction.