Tyler wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. His voice came out rough and thick. “That doesn’t mean you have to give it to me.”

“No,” Walter said.

He looked toward the car. The sun had slipped from behind a cloud, and the Camaro blazed black and bright against the wet driveway, every curve holding a small piece of sky.

“I want to,” he said.

Tyler stared at him. The younger man’s face moved through several expressions, disbelief, gratitude, fear, and settled at last on a kind of stunned tenderness. He looked down at the paper again, at the neat type and the careful line for a date.

“Why a dollar?” he asked finally.

“Tax people enjoy paperwork.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Sentimental consideration,” Walter said, with great dignity.

Tyler laughed through his tears, a wet, cracked sound that startled a sparrow off the fence. Then he looked at the signature line. Walter’s real signature was already there, in blue ink, unhurried and a little shaky at the tail of the final s. It looked nothing like the forgery. It was larger, looser, and entirely alive. Below it waited a blank line for Tyler’s.

“Should we get a notary?” Tyler asked, half joking.

Walter smiled.

“I know a few honest ones,” he said.

They did everything properly.

They drove the next morning to the county title office, a flat tan building with a flag and a line of folding chairs, and took a numbered ticket like everyone else. Walter brought his identification and the original title, folded in a plastic sleeve. Tyler brought his license and a cashier’s check for the fee, which he insisted on paying. They sat in the plastic chairs under fluorescent lights while a television in the corner murmured about the weather, and they waited for forty minutes, and neither of them minded.

Sandra Kline met them there, already smiling. She stamped the documents with a firm, satisfying thump. She checked both men’s identification twice, aloud, and asked each of them to confirm that they were signing willingly.

“Willingly,” Walter said.

“Very willingly,” said Tyler.

“Good,” said Sandra, and her smile was bright and a little teary.

Title office. Identification. Original documents. A recorded transfer. Insurance. Taxes. Every boring step in the proper order, with the proper forms and the proper fees, and a clerk who did not look up from her screen until she had to. Walter found, to his own surprise, that he enjoyed it more than he had expected. There was something almost sacred in the dullness. Every stamp was a small act of truth, and truth, in its ordinary form, looks very much like waiting in line.

When the clerk finally slid the new title across the counter and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Mercer,” Tyler stood motionless for a second, as though he had not understood the name.

Then he took it with both hands.

They walked out into the parking lot together. The sky had cleared completely, and the Camaro stood where Walter had left it, gleaming in the morning light. Tyler stopped beside it. He stood for a long moment with the title in one hand and the other hand hovering over the roof.

Then, deliberately, he placed his palm flat against the black paint.

Walter watched.

This time, there was no smirk. No sunglasses. No question beginning with or what. The hand rested on the car the way a hand rests on the shoulder of someone you love, lightly, with gratitude, aware that it had been invited.

After a moment, Tyler took the keys from his pocket. Walter had handed them over at the counter, still warm. He held them out.

“You drive it home,” he said.

Walter stared. “It’s yours now.”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

Tyler smiled. His eyes were red, and his voice was steady. “Because ownership doesn’t mean I have to take everything immediately.”

Walter shook his head slowly. “Now you’re just showing off.”

“I learned from the best.”

“You learned from a man with a bad knee.”

“Same thing.”

They drove back together. Walter behind the wheel, Tyler in the passenger seat with the new title in his lap, both windows down, the engine singing low and even. The road wound through the pines, past the old fairground and the diner with the cracked sign, and the air smelled of rain and cut grass. Walter shifted gently. His knee complained. He ignored it.

The same cul-de-sac came into view.

Different neighbors now, some of them. Different HOA president, a cheerful retired nurse named Priscilla Marsh who sent thank-you notes after every meeting. The same sprinklers, ticking across the lawns. No drama. No police.

He pulled into his driveway and shut off the engine.

For several seconds neither man moved.

The engine ticked, cooling. A bird sang somewhere. The Camaro sat in the quiet, and the afternoon light fell across the hood, and the two of them looked ahead through the windshield at the house, the garage, the plain, familiar world.

Tyler turned his head. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Real yes?”

Walter smiled.

“Real yes.”