They met in a conference room at a mediation office on the second floor of an old brick building near the courthouse. It was a neutral room, pale carpet and a long oak table, a pitcher of water sweating on a tray. A framed print of a lighthouse hung on the wall, the sort of picture chosen to make nobody feel anything in particular. A clock ticked nearby.

There were no police uniforms. No HOA representatives. Only Walter, his lawyer, Evelyn, and hers.

Walter had chosen the chair nearest the door out of habit. Thirty-three years of interview rooms had taught him to sit where he could see everything and leave without asking. He noticed Evelyn glance at that chair, and he wondered if she understood what the choice said about him, and what her own choice, the chair with its back to the window, said about her.

She looked older.

Not dramatically. She had not collapsed into some haggard caricature of herself. Her hair was combed, her blouse was pressed, her posture was straight. But the pressure of the past months had removed some of the certainty from her face, the way water slowly wears the glaze off a stone. The bright, confident edges were gone. What remained was softer and less defended, and Walter realized, with a small jolt, that he had never really seen her face without her armor.

“Walter.”

“Evelyn.”

They did not shake hands. She sat across from him, folded her fingers on the table, and for a moment looked at his. He wore no gloves, no jacket, only a plain flannel shirt and the old wristwatch Elaine had given him. His knuckles were scarred from decades of garage work.

“Do you still have the Camaro?” she asked.

“Yes.”

It was a strange question. Maybe it was not strange at all. It was the question of a person who has been circling a single object for so long that she cannot imagine talking about anything else.

She drew a breath. “That car became the end of my life.”

Walter’s expression did not change. “No.”

She looked up. “You know what I mean.”

“I do.” He leaned back in his chair. The wood creaked softly under him. “The car didn’t end your life, Evelyn. The car exposed decisions you had already made.”

Her mouth tightened. For an instant the old Evelyn flickered across her face, the president, the inspector, the woman with the binder. “You always did enjoy being correct.”

Walter almost laughed. It was such a human response, so utterly in character, that he felt something unexpected: not warmth, exactly, but recognition. “You forged my signature,” he said.

“I’m trying to apologize.”

“Then apologize.”

She looked offended, and her attorney shifted in his seat. A small silence settled over the table. The air conditioner clicked on. Walter waited, and he was patient, because patience was the one tool he had never lost.

Finally, Evelyn spoke, and her voice was lower than it had been. “I’m sorry about the paperwork.”

He waited.

“And?”

She sighed. It was a long, tired sound, the sigh of someone setting down a bag she had been carrying up a hill. “I’m sorry I involved Tyler.”

Walter nodded. Better.

“I thought,” she said, and then stopped. She started again. “I thought if he had the car, he would finally feel like I’d done something for him.”

Walter frowned, honestly puzzled. “You did plenty for him.”

“You don’t know.”

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”

“His father left.”

“I know.”

“He barely calls. Twice a year, maybe. A card on his birthday with a gift card inside, and a text at Christmas that says merry xmas with no capital letters.”

“I know.”

“Tyler worshiped that Camaro, Walter.”

Walter said nothing. He thought of the nineteen-year-old standing at the bottom of his driveway with his hands in his pockets, asking whether the engine was numbers-matching, and of the open, uncomplicated wanting on the boy’s face. He had seen it. He had even been moved by it.

Evelyn continued, her voice shaking now. “I couldn’t give him the life his friends had. I tried. I really tried. Do you know what that’s like, to watch your child look at other children and know that he’s doing the arithmetic?”

“You lived in Ridgecrest Meadows,” Walter said, not unkindly.

“That doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

She looked down at the table. Her fingers twisted together.

“My ex-husband paid support late,” she said quietly. “When he paid it at all. I used credit cards. I borrowed against the house. Every year, Tyler wanted things I couldn’t afford, a better phone, a trip with the soccer team, a class ring. And I said yes because I couldn’t bear to say no. And then the cards were full, and I told myself it was only temporary.”

Walter listened. He did not interrupt, and he did not soften his face. He had learned long ago that people confess more fully to a silence that does not flinch.

Then he said, evenly, “So you decided you were entitled to mine.”