Author’s Note: It’s kind of hard to balance the suspense and the fun of the antique car run and the relationship between Carson and Mackenna, and I’m sure I’m not doing it right, but they’re just so interesting to be around that every little moment between them wants to go in, and that probably distracts from the suspense of this being a mystery…

“I think taking her up by the Legion would be better,” Mackenna said, studying Phantom with a gleam in her eye that worried Carson a little. He didn’t know for sure how to react to her right now. They seemed to have crossed some kind of line last night, and both of them knew it, but they didn’t want to acknowledge it, either. He wanted to say that was just her doing more to heal, and that was a good thing, not a bad one, but at the same time, he felt like something was off, and he couldn’t explain what that was.

“That’s where they park the cars that run,” Carson said, and she glared at him. He knew she couldn’t argue his point, though. Phantom only moved because they’d replaced the tires, and she did it with a bit of a lurch that was worrisome to him at least. He didn’t know what Mackenna thought of it, and he was trying to respect her opinion as an expert, but that did not seem like a good idea.

“Plenty of people will get a look at her here,” Mac said. “Gonna need to do work on the eight. Engine’s not right.”

Mackenna grimaced. “I thought it wasn’t when we were driving, but I wasn’t sure. You want me to take a look at her? We’ll stay here, you head up to the Legion and take a break. You had to do all that driving, and you deserve it.”

Mac gave her a look, and Carson knew he wasn’t alone in thinking she was up to something again. He would never want to try and guess what was on her mind, but he could tell that much. She had some kind of scheme in mind.

“You sure?”

“If you run into Natalie and the others, ask them if they want to do dinner at the Legion or at the diner. Oh, crap. I forgot the card. Do you want to get them one to thank them for letting us stay with them or should I do that after we’re done here?”

“We’ll see.”

She rolled her eyes, going over to Shadow and flipping open the brackets that kept the hood in place. After she did that, she lifted off one side and then set the piece on the ground near the wheel, giving the engine a long look. “Hmm.”

“It’s not going to explode, is it?”

She laughed, shaking her head at Carson’s suggestion. “No. It’s not. I think I know what’s wrong, but it might take me a while.”

“That’s fine. It’s not like we were planning on going anywhere,” he said, shrugging. They didn’t have any events to attend, and the idea was to stick close to Phantom and see what interest people had in her so that they could go from there. They didn’t have a great plan, but they did have one. Of course, a part of him figured she was trying to force him to keep her company while she worked, but he didn’t mind. He was more comfortable with her than he would be with anyone else, as nice as everyone he’d met had been.

She smiled at him. “Would you get the toolbox out of the trailer for me?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mac said, walking away, and Mackenna watched him go before letting out a breath of relief. Carson frowned at her, but she grinned when she turned to him.

“You have no idea what kind of an opportunity this is. Even after as many years as I’ve been coming to these things, everyone likes to assume that Mac’s the only one that does any of the work on the cars. I still get people thinking I can’t drive them and if I say that I work on them, they look at me like I’ve grown another head.”

“You want me to go, too, so that they don’t think I’m the one working on the car?”

“No.”

Her quick refusal made him smile, and he swore he did see some red on her cheeks before she ducked underneath the hood. “I need an assistant, anyway.”

“Sure you do.”

“Where’s my toolbox? I seem to remember asking you for it a while ago.”

He rolled his eyes as he walked back toward the trailer, running a hand along Phantom’s fender and then her hood as he did. He didn’t think she’d ever be what Shadow was, but she’d look better someday. Maybe. He went up the ramp and picked up the toolbox with a wince. He was so not suited to this kind of work, and she’d mock him without mercy if she saw him struggling with it.

He felt eyes on him when he started down the ramp again, but when he glanced toward Mackenna’s direction, she was underneath the car, and so it couldn’t be her. He frowned, looking around. Plenty of people were driving by and a few of them were walking around, but none of them seemed to have any interest in him.

He tried to shake it off. He was just being paranoid, that was all. This place and situation made him uncomfortable, and he didn’t know what he’d find in his memories or someone else’s, so of course he was on edge. It didn’t have to be anything more than that.

Still, he couldn’t help looking around again as he walked back to Mackenna’s side, not wanting to be alone.

Author’s Note: Yes, actually, my grandfather does have a picture from the newspaper with Jack Benny standing in his 1911 Maxwell.

“Glad you bought the t-shirt?” Mackenna asked, leaning over to make sure that Carson could hear her, trying to keep her hair from going in her mouth as she spoke. The wind was mild today, but the open seat of the car made it seem ten times worse, and she should have braided it to keep it out of the way, but she’d been in such a rush that she’d forgotten.

Carson rolled his eyes. “I thought you were the navigator. What are you doing back here with me, making your grandfather act like a chauffeur?”

She laughed. “I’d almost go around calling him Rochester, but that would be wrong. Oh, wait, you don’t know that reference, either, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Jack Benny. On his show, he was notorious for being cheap, so he drove a Maxwell. Well, he didn’t. He had a chauffeur named Rochester who drove him around in it. Bob has a picture—Jack Benny sat in his 1911. It made the local newspaper.”

“Nice.”

“I like your shirt.”

“You’re a bit obsessed with it, from what I can see.”

“No, that was a hint. Show me your socks,” she said, pointing to his feet. He laughed, shaking his head as he did, revealing them, and she had to grin. “Handlebar mustaches. Great. Almost… fitting.”

“Yeah. I’m saving the bow ties for the parade.”

“Perfect.”

“I thought so.”

She caught herself thinking thoughts she never wanted to think, so she forced her mind away from them, leaning forward to check the route. She wanted to make sure they were on track, but she also wanted to know how much longer they would be in the car. She couldn’t justify moving up to the front seat, and she wasn’t that big of a coward, either. She didn’t have to run from sitting next to Carson just because of that last exchange.

“You should have dressed up, though, if you were going to make Mac act like your chauffeur. We’re not fancy enough back here.”

She laughed, settling back against the seat. She fingered his shirt sleeve, tugging on it. She liked the look of this year’s design, but more than that, she also liked the way that it made him a part of things. “Does that mean that you’re going to dress up with me for the run? Or just the parade?”

He sighed. “You won’t let that go, will you?”

“No.” She let her head fall on his shoulder, intending to blame it on the wind if she had to. “I have been trying to talk Mac into doing it for years. So now you’re stuck with me doing it to you. I’d apologize, but I’m not sorry.”

“I know you’re not.”

“Can I bribe you into it or do I just have to keep wearing you down until you agree?”

“I… You have this look on your face right now that I’m not sure I trust, and so I guess maybe I should just say yes so that I don’t have to worry about what that look means.”

She nodded. Yeah, that had to be for the best because she’d make a real fool of herself if she pushed things any further than she was already. “You can try the outfits on later today, and if they don’t fit, you’ll get out of it.”

“Ooh, a way out. I hope I can use it,” he said. She shoved him. He laughed. “Does this mean that I get to see your outfits, too, or am I the only one that will be tortured?”

“Seeing me in my dress is a privilege.”

“I didn’t mean that was the torture. I want to see how you look. I just… don’t want to dress up myself. If that’s the trade-off, though, I’m willing to make it.”

“Are you now?”

He started to say something and stopped, hesitating. “Um… I have this feeling I should do something right now, something that will…”

“That will what?”

“Do you think that the people who are interested in Phantom are people we should trust or do you think they’d have some kind of… motive that we should be worried about?”

She frowned, knowing that wasn’t what he’d been about to say, but he’d asked an important question nevertheless. “When we get back from this run, we can see what kind of interest we get. If anyone gives you a vibe you don’t like, maybe we can get some more information on them. And we didn’t talk to the other Messenger owner that Bob told us about. So we’ll do all of that later.”

“Okay.”

“That doesn’t mean you get out of trying on the costumes.”

“Damn.”

Author’s Note: My grandpa has a ritual for driving down to New London, always stopping at the same restaurant. I didn’t have Mac do that, though.

“That was a long five and a half hours, wasn’t it?”

“Just a little. It would have been nicer if the Woodsman had an extended cab,” Carson said, rubbing at the back of his neck. He and Mackenna had traded out being in the middle of the truck—and she’d ended up there for much longer than he did—but it had still felt like a much longer drive than it had been because of the cramped quarters. Mac was one of those who tried to make the trip shorter by stopping as little as possible, and it might have helped in the overall duration of it, but it still felt like forever after the night he and Mackenna had spent on the couch.

“You’d rather have been in one of those crappy fold down chairs?”

“Maybe. I could have stretched out across the back, maybe, or you could have, rather than be stuck all cramped in one spot. I know I elbowed you at least twice, and then somehow you fell asleep on me toward the middle of it…”

She looked away, and he wondered if he’d seen her blush or not. He thought there was a bit of red, but she’d turned so fast he could have been wrong about it.

“Does it matter that you’re parked in this empty lot?”

“Oh, we could park up in the school’s lot, but this is closer to the registration, and we’re not the only one who settles in here. Both lots will fill up if there’s enough cars, and there’s been eighty registered in the past. When we get Phantom going, we’ll drive two cars. One for Mac, one for you.”

Carson winced. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. I couldn’t drive either of the ones you have. I’d break something, and I am not wrecking a family legacy.”

“Don’t be silly, Carson. Phantom belongs to you. If you break her, we’ll fix her, and the same would go for the others, but you don’t have to worry about it driving yet. We’ll get you trained eventually.”
He nodded, but he had to admit, her talking like that bothered him. He didn’t know that he could stick around, as much as he needed her and liked being with her and feeling like he belonged, like he was a part of their family, but he knew Mac didn’t see him that way. He also knew that this was an expensive hobby that he couldn’t afford. He wouldn’t have the money they needed to repair Phantom in the first place.

He would look for a new job after this trip, and giving up his apartment would cut back on some of his expenses, but he still didn’t know how he’d be able to keep going now. His degree didn’t exactly make him in demand, and there were still a few lingering debts that he had yet to repay from college. He didn’t have the resources to be doing this, and he had his own mind to worry about as well.

“Carson? Something wrong?”

“No. I just… I was thinking. Nothing terrible, I promise. I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life after this week.”

“I thought we were turning you into a car nut,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Come on. They’ll have this year’s t-shirt inside, and you need a name tag, too. We’ll get you all the ‘official’ things you need. Maybe even a ticket for the raffle. There’s been some really nice quilts in the past, but we never win, so don’t be surprised if you don’t.”

“I never win. I figure raffles are more like donating to a cause—or a rip off. I guess it depends on who’s running it and why. I’m not a gambler, though. I never try the lottery, never play bingo, never go to casinos…”

“I should tease you about that, but I don’t do any of those things, either. We’re still getting you the t-shirts. Ooh, I wonder if those ladies that make the quilts would make you some socks…”

He stared at her, and she laughed before she tugged on his hand, dragging him forward. He should have known better than to try and resist. He never won with her, either.

Author’s Note: Okay, so there’s a bit more with the cameo part, and another one later in the story, but it’s okay. It’s for a good cause. 🙂

Incidentally, friends of Grandpa’s, ones in his car club, have a Schact. I thought it was “shot” at first, too. 😛

“You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“It’s a project, but it’s one that’s worth doing,” Mackenna said, and Carson tried to smile. He didn’t know how to feel anything less than awkward among the others, people who had apparently known each other for years and could finish each other’s stories and sentences. Their meeting was kind of all over the place, interrupted by pizza and only kept in line by Mary. Otherwise, they might have talked about restoring some car ten years ago instead of what they were there to do—start organizing their next swap meet.

The conversation found its way back to the car in the barn, though, after everyone had seen the pictures. He didn’t know when Mackenna had gotten them developed, but the stack had made the rounds at the table, with some commentary along the way that was as meaningless to him as a foreign language might have been. He didn’t understand any of it.

He didn’t know that a Shacht was a car, either. He’d almost thought they were talking about the murder for a minute with the whole “shot” thing, and he felt like an idiot when he realized it was a car brand, another one he’d never heard of.

Bob was watching him, and Carson didn’t know how long that had been going on. He didn’t know if that qualified as spacing out or not this time. “You don’t think it is?”

Carson frowned. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t know much of anything about cars. It used to be a gag, giving me cars as toys because of my name, and maybe that led to me running in the opposite direction, but I’ve never been a mechanic. You should see my other car.”

“That’s not your fault, though. You didn’t ask for a drunk to hit it.”

He shrugged. He still had a wreck that he couldn’t fix—two of them, actually. “I know, but there’s still nothing that I can do about it.”

“I could, but I think that Phantom’s worth it and that one isn’t.”

Bob nodded, and he wasn’t the only one who did. None of them seemed to argue with Mackenna’s decision about his car—and none of them had seen it. He had to assume that was the bias they all had toward their classics and antiques.

“You might ask in New London. I know there’s a man who brings a Maxwell Messenger to the run, one almost exactly like yours. Even has the wooden spokes on the wheels.”

“That’s great,” Mackenna said, grinning. “You’ll get to see what yours can look like when we’re done with it.”

Simon smiled. “Should we give you a registration form, Carson? I have a feeling you’ll be joining us soon. There’s really no stopping Mackenna when she gets started, and she’s been looking for a project like this for a long time.”

“I should hit you for that.”

Carson shook his head. “I don’t know that I need a membership just yet. I kind of figure the car will end up with the person who put the work into it, not me. I’m in transition at the moment, with a lot to figure out—new job, new place to live, new memories to uncover… I’ve got too much to do, and as I said before—I’m not a mechanic.”

“You don’t have to drive the cars or fix them to join.”

“You’d really just let go of Phantom like that?” Mackenna asked, staring at him. “I don’t understand. How can you do that?”

“She belongs to you more than me, Mackenna. I think that’s been clear from the beginning.”

“Yeah, sure,” she muttered, getting out of her seat, and Carson winced as she walked away from the table. He hadn’t meant to upset her—shouldn’t she be happy to get the car? That was her dream, wasn’t it? She’d loved it from the first time she saw it, and she should get to keep it if she was going to do the work on it.

“Oh, boy,” Simon said, shaking his head. Carson reached for his water, trying to find a way to make this whole thing less awkward.

Mac grunted. “You have no idea what you just did, do you?”

“No, I don’t. I thought she’d want the car.”

“There’s something else she wants a whole lot more than the car.”

Author’s Note: So normally I don’t do things like this, but I thought I had to, under the circumstances. Most of the time when I think of dedicating a story to someone because they inspired it or helped with it, I just find something to say at the beginning, but since everything I know about Maxwells and antique cars is from my grandfather and I borrowed his cars for Mac’s but Mac is not my grandpa, I figured that Grandpa had better cameo in the story.

So he did. Love you, Grandper. 🙂 And, yes, Grammer, you’re in there, too. 😛

“First of all, if you don’t meet everyone, that’s fine. One person you have to meet is Bob Long. He has got two Maxwells, just like Mac, and he’s also one of only two people who has done the New London New Brighton run every year. He’s a bit like Mac—not that much—and his wife Mary should be along. She’s always with him,” Mackenna told Carson as they walked to the back of the restaurant, a bit worried about how quiet he’d been all the way into the city. He didn’t seem to be much better than when she’d found him staring off into space in his room at the farm.

The idea of his grandfather betraying him like that had screwed him up good, and she wished they had some concrete way of disproving it. She didn’t really believe it, and she didn’t think Carson did, either, but that nagging doubt would continue to bother him until he had all of his memories back.

She reached out to touch his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I am. I’m just… me.”

She shook her head, nudging him over to the table. “Mac’ll be along in a minute. He’s being overly cautious with the Airstream again. I told him we should have brought the Woodsman, but he didn’t want to hear it. So, this is Carson. He’s probably going to end up joining the club because he just inherited a 1912 Maxwell Messenger, and you’ll love this—no one in his family knows where it came from.”

“Welcome,” one of the younger members said, rising. “I’m Simon. My wife is usually here with me, but one of the kids is sick tonight, so she stayed home with them. Rick there is the club president, and that’s his wife Patrice. Mary’s the secretary, she always does the minutes, and that’s her husband, Bob. Bob’s a Maxwell man, and you might just want to ask him about yours because his father used to own a dealership. In fact, I believe he sold at least one of Mac’s Maxwells to the family.”

“He did. The 1908. The 1911 came from a drifter in the thirties. Not as cool a story as the one about getting Bob’s Maxwell back for the price of a case of beer.”

Carson frowned. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” Bob said, shaking his head. He quirked a small smile, one of his signature ones, and Mackenna pushed Carson into the chair across from him. This would help, a lot, maybe. Bob was too young to have seen the car the day it was sold or anything, but he might know of old records or have his father’s tales to help with their search.

“Here,” Mackenna said, taking out the photographs she’d done of every inch of the car. “We figure the car’s been in Carson’s grandfather’s barn for about thirty years, maybe a bit less than that.”

“Well, at least twenty-two years, yeah,” Carson said, fidgeting. “That’s as much as my memories can narrow it down, if it is connected to something else, which we think it is.”

Simon frowned. “Something else?”

Carson coughed. “Um… My father may have been murdered, and um, the car might have been around when that happened.”

“And no one in your family knows where it came from?”

“Supposedly not.”

“Well, now, that’s no good,” Mary said, and Carson nodded. He reached for the water glass, and Mackenna almost regretted bringing him here. Maybe there were answers here, but maybe not, and he was so uncomfortable he looked ready to run. “Don’t you have any way of knowing for sure?”

“Well, we think I was there, since I have… nightmares and a few flashbacks, but I was eight, and I must have been so scared I blocked it away. Later, some of them came back, and they searched the farm for a body, but they didn’t find anything. I didn’t even know the car was there until Grandpa left me the contents of the barn in his will. Mostly it was scrap metal, but then it was… that.”

“Phantom.” Mackenna smiled at the looks she got. “I’m the only one who names the cars around here. Well, and I think Bob’s granddaughter named one of his, but he doesn’t use it.”

“Oh, so you’re the oddball in among all the car nuts?”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

Carson smiled, looking a bit more at ease now that they were teasing each other again. She nudged him with her shoulder, and he pushed her back. “Why didn’t you name the Airstream, then?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“I’m not allowed to use it.”

“You’re not?”

“Nope.”

“So you won’t even tell me what it is.”

She looked up as her grandfather walked into the room. She shook her head. She couldn’t tell Carson the name, not now. Maybe later, when Mac wasn’t around. He hated it, and if she’d known how much it would bother him, she’d never have started using it. As it was, she’d been forced to go back to Airstream just to keep the peace.

“I see she got you looking at the pictures already.”

“Boy’s got quite a story.”

Mac grunted. She knew he was still bothered by her connection to Carson, but she wasn’t going to stop helping him just because her grandfather had the wrong idea about them or even just about why she was doing it. “Have we already ordered?”

“Should be coming soon.”

“Good.”

Author’s Note: Just a few old timers gathered around a table swapping stories… Well, and a bit more.

“Thought you were some big shot with a degree now, Koslow. What you doing back here? You were always too good for the rest of us so—”

“So I don’t get the drinks that Mac’s friends ordered? Because I think even you should know better than to piss off your regulars,” Carson said, trying to keep his temper in check. He should have known that a loser and bully like Chambers would end up stuck in town, sponging off his former glory days, and what surprised him was not that the guy had a job as a bartender, but that he had a job at all.

If not for Larry and Nick, that kid would have beat the hell out of Carson every day.

He’d do it now if there weren’t so many witnesses, and Carson didn’t have his brothers to bail him out this time. Maybe if Mackenna got involved… He figured she had a mean right hook, she could do some damage—all that work fixing cars made her a lot stronger than Chambers would think.

“You know, if you’re hanging out with the geezer patrol to get with the girl, I should warn you—she plays for the other side.”

“I am going to hit you if you don’t shut up.”

“Gonna start saying I’m dead like you did your daddy?”

Carson smiled, a grim thing that had no kindness behind it. “You know, in recent years, I’ve come to suspect that I killed my father, and you might remember that they never did find his body, so… The drinks, now, and if you so much as look at one of the glasses funny…”

“You don’t scare me. You were never a threat. Only your brothers were.”

That was true, but Carson wasn’t about to back down. He heard something smack the table and looked over at Mackenna’s hand. “I think you lost out on any tip you might have gotten already, but what the hell? All the guys want is beer, and it’s not that hard to open them. You could have sent them to the table with the caps still on, and they’d deal with them. It shouldn’t take ten minutes to get the drinks.”

“Just discussing old times with your boy Koslow here. He ever tell you about that time we decided to make him the school mascot?”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I broke a guy’s arm for refusing to pay me for the work I did on his truck?” Mackenna asked, pointing to the bill on the bar. “That’s for the night, and you know it. We’ve already paid for several rounds. Just give us the drinks.”

Chambers muttered under his breath as he turned away. Carson gave her a slight smile. He’d been rescued, again, from the bully. “Larry and Nick used to hurt him on a daily basis.”

“Oh.”

“He picked on me.”

“Brotherly code. I understand. They were looking out for you.”

“I told him about my dad, about our latest theory, and the guy still thinks I’m the little kid I was when he bullied me.”

“Did you tell him we think you were probably eight when you dad died?”

“I forgot. I should have.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “I’m not sure that we should be joking about it, though I have to say, it’s been harder and harder to get our drinks around here since someone started working. It’s always a fight if anyone besides old Granger comes up to get them, and that’s because Granger’s a nasty old marine.”

“Gathered that much already.” Carson shrugged, reaching for the beers that Chambers had started to stack on the bar. Mackenna grabbed the rest of the other bottles, loading up both hands as she walked back to the table. He followed her, distributing the ones he’d picked up and finding that they had one more than necessary.

Mackenna took it from him, opening it. “I wouldn’t hate Chambers so much if he didn’t hit on me every time I was in here.”

“Oh. That explains it.”

“What?”

“He told me I didn’t have a chance with you because you’re a lesbian.”

She rolled her eyes. “Cute. Just because someone’s not attracted to him, they’re automatically gay. He is an idiot. I’m sure that he won’t last much longer here. He never seems to work anywhere for more than a month or two. I preferred him as a bartender over the guy at the gas station, though. Saw him way too much there because I have so many cars to deal with.”

Carson nodded. “I don’t blame you for that.”

“Should kick his ass for saying that, though.”

“You could, or you could grab one of these gentlemen here who would gladly help you prove otherwise. Think about it—he’s not your type, but they are, and wow, what an insult that would be, right?”

She giggled. “You’re devious. I like it. Only I can’t take advantage of the guys like that.”

“Take advantage! Take all the advantage you want,” the man beside her said, leaning over and puckering his lips as she laughed. That was Brady, Carson thought, but he’d lost track of all the names over the course of the night. He hadn’t had much to drink, a lot less than the rest of them, but they were all old friends, and their conversation was hard to follow for an outsider. “Please?”

“I volunteer, too,” George said, lifting his beer. “Been a long time since I’ve had a kiss from a pretty lady.”

“Not true. She gave us all kisses last week when she said goodbye.”

Mackenna grinned. “I did. You behave, and you might get another one tonight.”

“There something wrong with you that you didn’t volunteer yourself?” Granger asked, and Carson looked at him. “You’re her friend, right? Why not you? Why us old guys?”

“I suppose that came out wrong, the part about the old guys…”

“Lay off him, Granger,” Mac said, reaching for his beer. “The boy’s trying to sort out his issues with that missing father of his. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Damn shame, that. He had a beautiful wife and three fine boys. No reason to walk away from that. No good one, anyway. You know my boy Tom was in love with her, but she only had eyes for that one. Then he left her. Never came back. Never so much as a word.”

Fidgeting, Carson gave the old man a look. He wasn’t sure his father was a great man or anything, but he knew he hadn’t abandoned them completely. He’d come back. “I’m pretty sure he’s dead.”

“Nightmares again, kid?”

Carson took a sip, closing his eyes for a moment. “Memories. I don’t remember it all yet, but I know I talked to him at least once before he died.”

Brady shook his head. “Henry swore he never saw him again. None of them did.”

“Dad made me promise not to tell. I was a kid. I guess I didn’t.”

“Did he hurt you?”

Carson shrugged, feeling helpless again. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything, but there was one dream where I saw blood on my arm, so he could have or he could just have been dead… The one clear part I have doesn’t deal with him hurting me, but I can’t help worrying that he did.”

“Sounds a lot like James.”

“James?”

Mackenna winced. “Don’t go into that. Not now. Not here.”

“Oh,” Carson said, understanding what she was trying to avoid. She’d told him before, but he hadn’t connected that to this. “Your uncle?”

“Yeah. He—his unit was under review—someone had accused them of hurting civilians. I’m not sure if it was a war crime sort of thing or just an accident or what, but he couldn’t remember the incident well enough, and the idea that he’d been a part of that… It destroyed him.”

“He wasn’t,” Mac said, his voice cold. “Investigation cleared the whole unit. Too little, too late, though. My boy was already gone.”

“We need another round. Need to get those dark looks off some faces and get that one tipsy enough to kiss all the old men again.”

Mackenna forced a smile. “I don’t have to drink to do that, Brady.”

She leaned over to kiss his forehead, and then rose, doing a sort of duck, duck, goose thing as she circled the table. Carson smiled as she did, knowing that they all needed the distraction. He didn’t know that they’d learned anything here they hadn’t known before, but both Mac and Mackenna needed the old men—their friends—to keep going. This was a part of who they were, not just a casual outing. Their friends mattered to them.

Carson jerked when he felt her lips on his forehead, not expecting that, and the whole table burst out laughing. She grinned at him, sitting down and looking smug. “Gotcha.”

“Yeah, you did.”

George snorted. “That was nothing. Should have seen my Rosie back in the day. Now, she was quite a lady, but boy, she could kiss…”

Author’s Note: Back to the same nightmare…

Mackenna pulled on her robe as she rose, going to the door and looking out at the hall. She didn’t know that she’d been sleeping, she didn’t manage more than a doze most of the time, but if she had, that disappeared the moment she heard Carson screaming in the other room. She heard Mac moving around in his room, and she winced. He should be sleeping. He was too old to be woken in the middle of the night. Carson was her guest. She’d take care of it. She crossed over into the other room, going toward the bed.

What was that the experts said? Don’t wake people in a nightmare or a fugue? Or was it always wake them? Which was best?

Carson’s screams had stopped, fading into whimpers and one repeated word. “Don’t…”

Oh, hell, she didn’t care what the experts said. Maybe waking him was wrong, but maybe it would mean that he’d be able to remember something more for a change. Maybe it would just make her feel better because there was no way she could watch him like that.

She knelt next to the bed and gave him as gentle a shove as she dared, not wanting to startle him and hurt him, but she also wasn’t going to waste time getting him out of that nightmare. She couldn’t stand to see him like that, couldn’t take knowing that he was suffering, even if all of that happened years ago.

That didn’t make the pain fade in far too many cases.

“Carson. Hey, come on, now, you need to wake up,” she said, shaking him, trying to bring him around. After a moment, his eyes opened, and he blinked before shuddering and closing his eyes again.

“I woke the whole house again.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“That makes it so much better,” he said, rolling over. He pushed himself up to a seat, legs tangled in the blankets. He grimaced, trying to free himself. “Damn it.”

“It’s okay. Mac’s gotten used to this sort of thing. I used to do to him every night. Trust me,” she said, sitting down next to Carson. She gave him a smile, but he didn’t return it. “Did you… remember anything this time?”

“No. It’s always gone when I wake up,” he said, kicking off the sheets. “Why? Did I say anything that could help? Or was it just babble again?”

“Screams, whimpers, and ‘don’t.’”

“That could be anything,” he said, sighing. She nodded, unable to disagree. “Could be me begging the killer not to hurt my father, could be me begging my father not to do something to me… It’s too vague. Why can’t I ever get something useful from the nightmares? It’s not too much to ask, is it?”

“Nightmares are only useful when they show you what you fear. You overcome that fear, and then maybe you can say the dream helped. Most of the time, they don’t,” Mac said. He gave Carson a long look, appraising him, and then turned, leaving the room without further comment.

Carson groaned, putting a hand to his head. “I don’t get it. I mean, I just… don’t. It’s not like we haven’t found the worst case scenario, right? My father molested me, and I killed him. So I accept that, and my mind can stop hiding it from me. I know what happened, I don’t need to keep it locked up anymore.”

“You still don’t know that is what happened. You don’t know that either of those things happened. Maybe the reason you’re afraid of it is that you don’t want to face the person who did kill him. Maybe you trusted that person too much.”

“I’ve been wondering if Grandpa did it for years. It’s always been my first assumption, and he’s the one I trusted the most. I don’t know, Mackenna. I’m so frustrated with myself, with my inability to look at what happened and see what it was. I keep saying I want to know, but I must not want to because I refuse to let myself do it.”

“Did you ever get checked out by a doctor?”

“What?”

“Maybe the trauma’s not just emotional or mental. Maybe you were hit on the head or something. You have a problem with your memory from then because something got damaged when you were hurt. Did anyone ever look into that? Did they scan your brain or just put you on drugs and assume you were crazy?”

“I don’t think anyone did, no. I don’t remember any scary machines doing brain scans.”

She touched his hand. “That’s another thing to look into, then. Just have them see if you have any old scars that might relate to when that happened that could be physically impairing your memory. You don’t have any unexplained scars around your head, do you?”

“Only scar I’ve got on my head is right here, and that’s from when Nick hit me in the head with a shovel. It was an accident, but I had to get stitches. It’s not some random mark I’ve never known about or had an explanation for. I remember when it happened.”

“Okay. I could be wrong. I’m just throwing out ideas.”

“I know. I’m grateful, really, I am. I know I keep saying this, but… I need you. I don’t have anyone else. If I knew when it happened, maybe I could go back to trusting my brothers, but right now… I don’t know how to trust them. To trust anyone in my family.”

“Yeah.”

“You trust Mac, right?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good you have him.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged, not wanting to go anywhere near her past. “So… since we’re awake, more cards? If, of course, you can stop accusing the winner of cheating. Just because they’re winning doesn’t mean they’re cheating.”

Carson rolled his eyes. “You only say that because you always win.”

Author’s Note: Not every moment is tense and full of mystery, I guess.

“Are you planning on driving back to the city tonight?” Mackenna asked, watching Carson’s face, more bothered by her question than she cared to admit. She didn’t know why it mattered. She could still call him if he left, and he did have a day job. His business wasn’t like hers. She got a project like his and worked on it until it was done, no clock to punch, and while Carson still said he didn’t know how to pay for it, she wanted to make Phantom run again.

She felt her grandfather’s eyes on her, and she wondered if he’d ask her, if he assumed that fixing the car was her way of fixing Carson, too. She didn’t think anyone could do that. He needed his memories to do that, and he didn’t seem able to unlock them, even with their discussions on the worst case scenarios. He still couldn’t seem to face what he’d seen or done back then.

She hoped there were answers at the run, that someone might recognize Phantom, but she had no way of knowing. She’d like to get a few things first—replacing the tires was essential, making the car mobile again, even if the engine didn’t work—and if Mac could weld the other half of the hood, that would be great, too. He might even have a spare one out rusting in his scrap heap.

“I… I should, but I don’t want to. I hate the idea of facing Myers and telling him what the company decided. I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t know how to stop it, either.”

“Don’t you know how to bypass the bureaucracy? Can’t you set him on the right track?”

“It’s not the bureaucracy. At this point, it’s going to the courts, and the courts almost always rule in favor of the people my company represents, not guys like Myers. I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know how to manipulate that to help anyone.”

“Too bad you don’t have real sharks, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Dinner,” Mac said, and she smiled, nodding to him as he headed up to the house. She turned back to Carson, putting her hands in her pockets and fidgeting.

“I have to cook.”

“So go cook.”

“Are you staying or going? You didn’t answer that yet. I need to know. It’s important. I need to know if I’m feeding you or just me and Mac. I don’t have to make as much if it’s just the two of us, so… you know… an answer would be nice.”

“I’ll stay. Maybe if we play cards with Mac, you won’t be able to cheat as much.”

She snorted. “Are you kidding? You’re the one that cheated. You kept winning and then getting all upset when I had a good round or two. Jerk.”

Carson rolled his eyes, and she grabbed him by the hand. “Come on. You can help me cook. Or you can just keep me company while I do. I don’t care. Either way is fine by me. I don’t know that I could teach you much of anything, but you said no one in your family cooked, so maybe you might learn something, break your bad habits with tv dinners or something.”

“Hey, some of them can be very nutritious,” he said. She gave him a look, and he laughed. “Okay, so what I actually do is have all my meals delivered by one of those weight loss programs. Maybe it’s not the greatest food ever, and you’re supposed to add stuff to it, but I never do. At least that way I get a balanced sort of meal versus something that is so processed that it can’t possibly be good for me or anyone, for that matter.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I’m one of their success stories. Just look at the website.”

Mackenna shook her head, unable to help the laughter. He was terrible sometimes. “I thought you didn’t eat that much.”

“I don’t.”

“You are such a mess.”

“I know. We both are.”

Author’s Note: I owe what Mac says to my grandfather. He said it first, once, when we were driving in the 1908 Maxwell.

“Natural air conditioning.”

Carson leaned forward, not sure he’d heard the old man right. “What?”

“There’s no top,” Mackenna explained, translating for her grandfather. “Natural air conditioning.”

“Oh,” Carson said, feeling foolish. He was far out if his element here, lost and confused, and he knew that it amused Mackenna to watch him stumble about like he did. He didn’t mind that so much. He felt better here, a part of something, which was different. He’d been an outsider in his own family for so long, the crazy one, and he didn’t know how he could feel like he fit with a taciturn old man and a mechanic who liked to tease him, but he almost thought he did somehow.

“Isn’t this great? I would do this every day if I had time,” she said, leaning over the back of the chair. I can’t wait to drag you on all the stuff for the run. We’ll take Shadow around the lake, have root beer floats…”

“You really get into that, don’t you?”

“These cars have history. They have stories. They’re not just collector’s items—they are, but they’re so much more than that, too. They were someone’s first drive, someone’s cross-country trip. They moved families around, they were all they had to their names, they were someone’s treasure, someone’s inheritance…” She shook her head, still smiling. “I don’t know. In some ways, they’re a gateway to another time and place, only you don’t have to leave where you are.”

“You are such a geek. One would never know it to look at you, but you are.”

“Hey! I object to that. Who is calling who a geek now, Mr. Funny Socks?”

“Might be kettle and pot situation, I admit, but you so are. You’re a complete car geek. You’re not just about the fixing of them. You’re all about the stories and the history—”

“People who like cars are collectors or enthusiasts. Not geeks.”

“Please. Geek is like a catch-all phrase now.”

“I will show you a catch-all, buddy.” Carson knew that she would have, if she hadn’t stopped when she heard her grandfather’s voice.

“Mackenna.”

She slumped down in her seat, pouting. Carson smiled, thinking she was right. He could have used a sister like her growing up. She’d never treated him like he was going to break. She backed off when she thought she needed to, pushed when she could, and she kept him going, kept him searching and trying to explain things rather than acting like the explanation would break him, no matter what it was.

She understood, he supposed, because a part of her was broken, just like he was broken in his way, and his brothers seemed to have avoided that. He didn’t know why or how, but they had. Nick and Larry were immune to whatever had happened, and Carson didn’t understand that any more than he did the rest of the murder.

“You’re quiet back there.”

He leaned forward again, putting his hands on the back of her seat, next to hers. “I don’t really know what to say right now. It was fun teasing you until we got in trouble. Then I started thinking, and my mind went where it always goes…”

“Yeah.” She tapped his hand. “You want to learn to drive this one? It’s not the same as any stick shift you might have tried in the past.”

“It isn’t?”

“Not quite.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t. I’d be afraid of breaking it. I don’t want to crash this thing and ruin everything. It means too much to you and to Mac and…” Carson sighed. “I suppose that sounds all cowardly, huh? I just… can’t destroy something that important.”

She nodded. “I understand. I won’t force you. It took me years to work up to driving them, and I still get nervous about it. I have a hard time stopping every now and again. Don’t feel bad. I’m sure if we get Phantom going for you, you’ll feel like driving her all the time. She’ll be yours.”

“Won’t that bother you? Letting her go after putting all that work into her?”

“Well, you’re not going to stop being my friend and surrogate brother as soon as I fix your car, are you?” She frowned. “Or should I ask if you’d stop talking to me if you figured out who killed your father and why? Would you do that? Just… stop?”

He shook his head. “I can’t think of any reason why I would.”

“Then we’ll still talk, and you’ll bring her by, and it’ll be like seeing a distant relative, I guess. You can still love something—someone—you don’t see every day.”

“True.”

She gave his hand a pat and turned around to face the front again. He sat back, feeling even more awkward than before. It wasn’t like he had any plans to stop talking to her for any reason, he wasn’t lying about that, but now that the subject had been raised, the whole thing left him with an unpleasant taste in his mouth, like his stomach was going to turn on him again, and he tried to hold that back. He wasn’t leaving today—he’d have to go to work sometime—and he could still call her when he was back in the city, like he had before, so why did it matter so much all of a sudden?

He didn’t know that he wanted to know.

Author’s Note: I have a bunch of links today. I made a reference guide with a few pictures.

I put the song in Kabobbles Sing Along.

I think the rest speaks for itself. 🙂

“Here,” Mackenna said, pushing the door open the last little bit and stepping back to gaze on the two beauties hidden behind it. She couldn’t help smiling. Seeing the antiques always made her happy, though she didn’t know why. Maybe it was because this was where she’d first met Mac, out here tinkering, and those two grills had seemed kind of spooky looming out of the garage the first time, but then when she realized what they were and Mac had her working on them, she’d found something she hadn’t had since her uncle died. Peace.

Rebuilding Scarlet’s transmission had put a lot of her back together, and she’d always be grateful for that. She’d never let that car go, even if the other one was her favorite. Shadow had been in her family since the beginning, more of a member of it than she was, but somehow it let her feel like a part of the family, its second seat making it possible for her to go on the antique car runs with her grandparents and share those memories.

She shook her head. Since when was she nostalgic? She wasn’t.

“So. Two Maxwells. What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Carson said, walking toward Shadow with a bit of awe in his voice as he did. “So… this is what Phantom would look like if it was in better shape?”

“Well, Shadow is unrestored, yes, but this one’s a HC touring car. Phantom’s a messenger. Mac said I told you wrong about the year, and I should have known better. It’s more similar to the runabout, more like Scarlet over there.”

“Oh. That threw me off. Phantom has doors.”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’s a bit different from a runabout, seems to be a bit rarer from what I’ve seen, I’m not an expert on them. Mac is. He shook his head at me saying 1909. Said it had to be a ’12 and I should have known that.”

“Why?”

“The doors.”

Carson shook his head. “I wouldn’t have known, either. I didn’t even known Maxwell was a car company before I opened up that door and saw Phantom sitting there. I don’t know what to think of any of it. These things… well out of my reach, I guess, other than the one I somehow inherited.”

She couldn’t help a smile. Educating him about the cars might just be fun. “I’m going to enjoy this. Have you ever heard of the mother-in-law seat?”

“What?”

She laughed. “I’ve always gotten a kick out of that. Remind me to show you that song, too. And her mother came, too… Okay, I can’t sing, but I’ll dig it out. I heard it on a movie, and ever since, it’s been connected for me. They also call it a rumble seat or a dickey seat—that’s a British term—but the idea’s the same. It’s just an extra seat, unprotected. Probably originally intended for servants, but not necessarily. I haven’t done all the research into them. I just get a kick out of calling it a mother-in-law chair, especially after the song.”

Carson managed a smile. “All right. So it’s just an extra seat.”

“It could have been a tool rack, but yeah, you could put a chair there. Drag the mother-in-law along behind you.”

He shook his head. “I guess that might be tempting if you didn’t like her much. Not that anyone would have to worry about it with me. Or with you. No mothers left, right?”

“Exactly.” She didn’t know why they both grinned when he said that, like it was a good thing that both of their mothers were dead. It wasn’t. Not really. She forced her eyes back to the car. “So. Now that you’ve gotten a better look at these babies, what do you think?”

“Do they actually… run?”

“You bet your ass they do.”

“Mackenna.”

She looked behind her, wincing. “Sorry, Mac. I just… I’m defensive when it comes to my babies. They’re the only children I plan on having, which is kind of screwy when you think about them being over a hundred years old each.”

“Very disturbing,” Carson said, a frown on his face. She reached over to ruffle his hair just for the hell of it and flipped back the latch on Shadow’s hood. He needed to see what it was like to drive in the cars, and since Mac was out, they needed the touring car with its back seat. She was not making Carson sit on the toolbox. “Where are the keys?”

“No keys, not back then.”

“Couldn’t someone have… stolen it then?”

Mac lifted the magneto switch out of his pocket. “Not likely without this, and just because they might have got it started didn’t mean they knew how to drive it. It’s not like them fancy ones today. No getting behind the wheel and letting it do all the work.”

“Come here,” she told Carson, letting her grandfather start the oil drip. “Normally, they’re be more prep to this, since the car would have sat for a while, but we took her out last week. Swap meet with the Horseless Carriage Club.”

“There’s a club?”

“There’s a lot of clubs. You don’t have to own a car to be a member, but some of them have fees, so you’d have to keep that in mind.” She pulled him over. “You ever started a car using a crank?”

“No.”

“Be careful. It might kick you.”

“What?”

“Push the handle in, hold it there. No, don’t let it out,” she said, trying to show him how to do it. “You have to keep that part held in as you turn. Go clockwise, and yank it up. Start down, pull up. No, let go there. If you push back that way, it’ll break your arm if it kicks.”

“This is a lot harder than it looks.”

She laughed. “It takes some getting used to. They used to cheer for me when I managed it. Especially since I seem to lose all credibility the minute I’m out in that crowd. Girls don’t know cars, can’t possibly drive one of these…”

Mac grunted. “She can. Should see her on a run. Does it all in a dress.”

Carson looked at her. “You wear dresses?”

“Only once a year. I get into the costuming. It’s fun.” She couldn’t help being amused by the look Carson gave her. “Yeah, I do. It’s just a lark, but I like proving them all wrong. Women weren’t sissies, not even back then. You know four women drove across the US in 1909? A woman named Alice Ramsey was behind the wheel all that way. She did her own repairs, even wrote a book about it.”

“Wow.”

“You know what? We should go. All of us. To the run. One of Mac’s favorites is coming up, and we always go, even though he threatens to quit going each year.” Both of the men were looking at her now, and she shook her head. She wasn’t crazy—even if the idea of getting Carson in anything close to vintage clothes was probably impossible. “It’s a great idea. We borrow an extra trailer, take Phantom along, and then we show her off.”

Carson frowned. “In her state? She’s a mess.”

“Yeah, but the people involved in the run have done it for years in many cases. Some might be new, but it’s not exactly a club that everyone joins. A lot of people don’t get this sort of thing, and some of them don’t have the money for it. They might recognize Phantom on sight and know who sold it to your grandfather and when.”

“I don’t know.”

“Other than trying to find out who in your family owns a handgun—which might not tell you anything even if they did depending on where they keep it; anyone could have removed it and killed your father and then put it back or they got rid of it years ago—the car is the only lead you have. Even just the right year could help you start unlocking all that stuff in your head.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I bet you’d look good in costume.”

“Shut up.”

“Mac has a spare duster, and you could just wear it. You wouldn’t even have to give up your socks. No one would know.”

“Stop it.”

“Say you’re going, and I’ll stop teasing you about it.”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll go. Okay. Happy now?”

She gave him a smug smile, enjoying her victory. One thing she liked about Carson—he was a lot f fun to tease. He made a good surrogate brother, didn’t he? She was fine with one of them. She didn’t need anything else, but she could use a friend. Everyone could, and other than Mac, she hadn’t had one of those in a long time.