“Would you like to drive it?”

She looked at me as if I had just promised her a six-month tour of Europe. “You’d let me do that?”

“Sure. Let me get the keys.”

I had started moving toward the board where all of Haley’s keys hung on little hooks when Olivia Soto said, “Well, actually…”

I stopped and looked back at her. “Yes?”

“You’re going to think this is strange, but as long as you’re offering, do you think I could, I mean you and I could…”

“Go ahead and ask. The worst thing I can say is no.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true. Could we take apart the engine?”

“What?”

“Well, not completely apart, obviously. Just maybe pull off this plastic cowling around the edges of the compartment so I can see it better?”

“Is that all?”

“Well, maybe we could remove the valve covers, if that’s not too much trouble. I mean, you have all these tools…”

“Okay, you’re right. I do think this is strange.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But I mean, this thing is incredible.” She had turned back toward the car’s engine, looking at it the way some women look at horses and others look at clothes. “Who wouldn’t want a closer look?”

I figured I would play along a little. After all, I could always put things back together. So fifteen minutes later, we had the plastic cowling off and the engine on full display.

She leaned in and spoke in a reverent tone. “Would you look at that.”

I had noticed that she wore her fingernails short and without polish. Watching how she laid her hand on one of the manifolds, I said, “You’re the first woman I’ve ever met with a thing for engines.”

“Not just engines,” she said, stretching and craning her neck to see down into the gaps between the block and chassis. “Pretty much anything mechanical, as long as it’s well designed. Bicycles. Boats. Electronics. Would you please pass that wrench?”

“This one?” I handed her a ratchet wrench, and she went to work on one of the valve covers. I said, “You do know we’re going to have to replace the gasket if you take that off?”

She looked back over her shoulder at me. “You have pneumatic wrenches and a hydraulic lift, but no spare head gaskets?”

“Olivia, this is really weird.”

Her face fell. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I promise I’m really not a crazy woman. I just have this thing for engines… Sometimes I get kind of carried away.”

Maybe it was the hangover, or maybe it was my own struggle with bizarre impulses, but to me at that moment, what she said made sense. “It’s okay,” I said. “We’ve got spare gaskets.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Knock yourself out.”

I stepped back and watched as she crawled all over the engine. Soon she had the valve covers off. She tinkered with the lifters for a while, and then she moved on to inspect other parts. Now and then she mumbled things like “Huh” and “Wow.” After nearly an hour of that, she started putting everything back together. I watched closely to make sure she did it right. She did, and it didn’t take her long.

I said, “Where’d you learn to work on cars?”

“In Spain. I serviced Formula Ones.”

“I didn’t know there was a Spanish team.”

“It’s the only one. They used to be called Hispania Racing, but now they go by HRT F1.”

“How’d you get involved with them?”

She stepped back from the Bentley, wiping her greasy hands on a shop towel. “Pretty much the way I got you to let me have a look at this one.”

“I’ll bet men usually say yes when you ask for things.”

She said, “They do.”

Her smile lit up the garage, and I remembered Haley at the Nueces River. I made myself refocus on the present. “I’ll bet you didn’t come here to play with the Bentley.”

“No. I came to deliver that.” She nodded with her chin toward a nearby workbench. On it was a manila folder. I went over, picked it up, and withdrew a few papers.

“Background on Alejandra Delarosa,” I said.

“The congressman pulled some strings and had someone put the file together for you. He and Doña Elena thought it might be helpful.”

I saw names and contact information for the woman’s former employers, landlords, priest, and other acquaintances. There was the LAPD case file Russo had refused to share with me, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement file, and more. I started reading and got interested. When I looked up a few minutes later, Olivia Soto was watching me with a frown, which she quickly replaced with a more neutral expression.

I said, “Please be sure to thank the congressman for me.”

“You know, he had another file. On you.”

“Did you read it?”

“I might have seen a few things, while it was lying open on his desk.”

“I see.”

“I was wondering if you’d tell me… that poor woman and your overdose. How did you come back from that? How did you stay sane?”

For some reason, the question embarrassed me. I tried shrugging it off with a grin. “What makes you think I’m sane?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my business.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. The silence was a little awkward. I remembered her parting questions at the Montes’s house the day before, and I thought about the fact that the file could easily have been sent over to me by courier.

“Well,” she said, “thanks for a great time. I’ll be going now.”

I walked her outside and along the gravel drive toward the car she had parked beside the fountain at the mansion’s entrance. Our footsteps crunched on the gravel. The water gurgled in the fountain. There were the usual birds-of-paradise, bougainvillea, and morning glories, all Teru’s handiwork. God chipped in with a pair of hummingbirds flashing metallic ruby and green, a perfectly blue sky, and a perfectly green lawn.

When we got to her car, a little Japanese thing, I said, “It was good to see you again.”

She offered her hand. “Yes. Thank you.”

I needed to say something to get her talking. I needed to know more about why she was really there. I’ve found the best way to get people to open up about themselves is to open up myself, so I said, “I have no idea why I’m not crazy.”

“I’m sorry?”

I said, “What you asked me a minute ago… I think that a lot.”

“It wasn’t an idle question. I lost somebody once. Sometimes I think I’ve been crazy ever since.” She looked at me closely. “You understand?”

“I do.”

She covered my hand with her other one, and we stood that way, my one hand in both of hers. It felt very presumptuous. Very awkward. But I also felt the fact of her. I felt it flow into me. Another person, touching me. I felt it travel up my arm and spread within my chest and begin to burn away my nerve endings, which strangely didn’t cause me pain, but only the utter lack of feeling that can only come with bitter cold.

The nothingness that had nearly conquered me forever hovered all around us as she said, “I knew it. I saw it in you yesterday. You have a broken heart.”

I hadn’t thought it possible to feel the loss of Haley in a new way, but to hear myself described so precisely with such a cliché left me speechless.

She moved closer. She released my hand and placed her palms flat against my chest. She was beautiful, but I witnessed her hands against my chest with a sense of impotent outrage, as if watching from too great a distance while someone tried to steal from Haley. Olivia looked up at me, her eyes searching mine, her lips moist and slightly parted. She had completely misunderstood, just as I intended, and she had revealed a little something. Maybe it was important. I hoped so. It was costing a great deal to learn.

She said, “Maybe I can help. Maybe we can help each other.”

I was paralyzed. I couldn’t bring myself to push away. I stood there, absolutely helpless as my heart raced. The ground around us turned to polar blue. I felt the freeze creep up my legs. I felt it spread across my loins, my stomach and my chest. I was ice, a pillar of it in the Southern California sun. I saw the water vapor in my breath condense, a fog ascending toward the place where Haley waited. I saw white frost form on Olivia’s black hair. I feared for her. If she did not let me go, I knew my frigidness would spread to her. I began to tremble. She felt it. She stepped back.