"I finished that, too."
I looked over at Bellows. He was at his bench, hunched over a brake caliper, not looking at either of us.
"There's a deck of cards in the top drawer," he said, his voice gravelly. "Left side."
Lily disappeared. I heard the metal scrape of the drawer opening, followed by a concentrated silence. With Lily, silence usually meant she’d found a puzzle worth solving. I turned back to the Silverado.
The afternoon moved. Lily came out once to ask Bellows what solitaire was. He explained the rules in four clipped sentences without looking up from his work, and she went back in.
An hour later, she reappeared. She stood at the edge of the bay, watching me with the focused attention she usually reserved for things she was about to take apart.
"What's wrong with it?" she asked.
"Fuel injectors," I said. "Blocked."
"How do they get blocked?"
"Dirty fuel. It builds up over time until the system can't breathe."
She considered this, her head tilted to the side. "Like how your arteries can get blocked?"
I looked at her, wiped a streak of grease across my forehead, and paused. "Yeah. Exactly like that."
She nodded, satisfied with the logic of it, and retreated to the office.
Bellows appeared at my shoulder a moment later. "Smart kid," he said.
"Don't tell her that. Her head's already a problem."
He made that half-laugh sound again and headed back to his bench.
At four-thirty, Lily emerged from the office and announced she was hungry. I looked at the Silverado—which was still a mess of wires and parts—and then at Bellows. He was already putting his tools away with the slow movements of a man whose back had officially clocked out for the day.
"Go on," he said. "Finish it in the morning."
I started cleaning up, wiping down my station. Lily stood in the center of the bay, watching Bellows lock his heavy metal toolbox. I could see her doing the calculation—the same predatory look she’d had at the supermarket right before she cornered Maddie in the parking lot.
"Do you want to come for dinner?" she asked.
Bellows stopped, his hand still on the lid of the box. He looked at her.
"Uncle Jack always makes too much," she said, doubling down. "We always have leftovers we don't know what to do with."
Bellows looked at me. I gave him nothing. I’d already learned that when Lily set her sights on something, the best move was to stay out of the blast zone.
He looked back at her for a long moment. "What's he making?"
"I don't know yet," Lily said. "But it'll definitely be too much."
A brief and unguarded flicker passed through Bellows’ face, before it settled back into its usual arrangement.
"All right," he said. "One condition."
Lily stood her ground, waiting.
"You tell me how the solitaire went."
She looked at him with total gravity. "I lost every time."