“The car isn’t the problem,” Rachel said, sliding a stack of heavy stoneware dinner plates into a newspaper-lined crate. “It’s the people who live next to a six-hundred-thousand-dollar stone house. They like things neat. They like everything to look like a magazine page, and they have the money to make sure it does.”
Olivia sat on the bare hardwood floor near the radiator, her knees tucked to her chest. She had her grandfather’s old leather sketchbook open on her lap, drawing a series of tiny, perfect pine trees along the margins with a charcoal pencil.
“Will Grandpa’s house have a radiator like this one?” Olivia asked, not looking up from her page.
“No, sweetie,” I said, lifting a heavy roll of packing tape from the counter. “It has baseboard heat, and a fireplace for when it gets cold in November.”
