Chapter 37

“Oh! She’s a beauty.”

“You bet! She goes from zero to sixty in—”

He gave me a look.

I coughed. “That’s what the manual says. I haven’t tried it myself,” I assured him.

“Of course you haven’t.” He grinned at me, but there was something in his eyes…

“Dad? What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “I could never afford to get you something like this.”

“That’s okay.”

“It’s not. I should have—”

“No.” He shouldn’t feel bad because he wasn’t the one who bought me a set of wheels. We’d always been comfortable; he made a good living when construction was booming—the union had gotten its workers a fantastic contract—and when it wasn’t, he did any number of side jobs. I had a Nintendo DS, an MP3 player, and my own stereo system in my room.

What I couldn’t understand was why he drove a car almost as old as I was, and why the television in the living room was only nineteen inches, instead of a fifty-inch flat screen.