On Lance’s phone, the destination dot for Goodview Towing sat on a nameless gray line that intersected with a state highway Dakota had only been on once before. They left the highway and climbed into forest. A steep one-lane road bent around hairpin turns, the shoulder narrowing until pavement met cliffside at a ninety-degree angle.

Without a word, Dakota twisted the car into a gap in the greenery. They rattled down a long gravel drive to an open gate laced with barbed wire. A wooden sign, painted with elegant black letters:

the boneyard.

“Not a great name,” Dakota said.

“No. Not great.”

They got out of the car.

Walking into the Boneyard was like entering the climactic discovery scene of a true-crime movie. The killer’s corpses were on display, as if there was some pride involved: A Ford truck with eviscerated hoses splayed across its hood. An ’80s-era Celebrity, compacted and blackened like an overcooked potato. An accordioned convertible. Others, jacked up, stripped of their tires, and left in the sun to rot.

But no Buick. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

“Where’s his shop?” she asked.

“No clue,” Lance said.

Dakota whistled something scary, probably from a horror movie.

“Can you please stop?”

Lance led the way, feeling slightly more rugged in denim. Cars, everywhere. A hedge maze of metal and broken glass. Vehicles without doors, spray-painted silver. A radiator. Pile of tires. Dakota was close behind him. Maybe he should hold her hand.

A sudden motion to Lance’s right and he leapt back, fists flying up to defend himself. A beast! A creature! A very small dog, leaping onto the hood of a Crown Victoria. The cocker spaniel growled, baring its teeth.

“Daisy! Goddamn it!” Lance said.

“Hey there!” William said, jack-in-the-boxing into view. “Glad you found us.” He came around a pile of crushed bumpers and introduced himself to Dakota, then led them through the Boneyard.

“That guy’s your mechanic?” Dakota said.

“I don’t know if he’s my mechanic. He’s a mechanic.”

“Let’s hope so.”

William was waiting for them outside a squat, gray building. He smiled.

“Where’s the shop?” Dakota said.

“You’re looking at it,” William said. “Just me and the missus.”

William’s shop was apparently a single-stall residential garage illuminated by one halogen lamp clamped to a steel shelf. Rusted blue toolbox on the ground, scattered parts.

And what was left of the Buick.

The doors were wide open. Hood up, insides gutted. Hoses, wires, and cables draped over its sides. Someone hunched in the driver’s seat. A flash of orange hair and weathered cheeks briefly conjured William’s evil twin—but no—this was a woman. Small flashlight in her mouth. Face slick with sweat.

The Missus.

“Hey there,” she mumbled around the light.

“What’s going on?” Lance asked.

“That’s what we’d like to know!” She cackled at her own joke. William, too, roared with laughter, and the sounds ricocheted off the tight concrete walls, making the garage sound like an asylum.

“Mary, tell him what you found,” William said.

“I had to go into the dashboard,” Mary said, shaking her head. “Whole thing is dead. Speedometer. Gas gauge. Nothin’ works!” Wires spilled out beneath the dash.

“Lance, c’mere.” William stepped to the side and aimed a flashlight into the guts of the engine. “See that little wiggly wire? That little one. You see that?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks wiggly, don’t it?”

“It does.”

“See, I don’t remember them wires being that wiggly. Could be somethin’ there. See, babe? That wiggly wire?”

“Lance, get in,” Mary said. “William will show you how she starts up.” Lance switched places with her. The interior reeked of Old Spice and motor oil. This car had spent the night with someone else. He tried to ignore the conduit spilling around his ankles. Fragments of plastic and clipped wires that did not look like they could be put back together. William stood beside the engine with an aerosol can.

“Now grab that key and get ready,” he said, eyes dancing with glee. “Crank it!”

Lance turned the key.

“Keep going! Keep cranking!”

Lance twisted until the Buick was grinding. Squealing. Begging him to stop. William sprayed a stream of oil from his can. The engine popped like a firecracker, then died.

“See how it starts?” William said.

“Yeah,” Lance said. The word tasted like lead.

“That’s encouraging, ain’t it? Go on and crank it again. Hard.”

“I don’t think that’s good for the car,” Lance said.

“Probably not,” Mary said.

“True. Probably not,” William said, nodding. “So how about that wiggly wire, Lance? What do you think?”

Lance did not attempt to see the wiggly wire. Instead, he looked back at the dash and remembered preparing the Buick for a trip with his grandmother a few years ago. His father had removed a fuse to make the check engine light go off.

That’ll kill the dummy light. Let’s not give Grandma anything to worry about.

“Have you checked the fuses?” Lance asked.

Mary and William stared back at him. Then William dug in his toolbox and came out with a handful of green and yellow fuses. Lance thumbed them in while Mary turned the key, feeding whatever juice the battery had left into the dash. After the third or fourth fuse, she cried out.

“Hallelujah!” Mary said. “Let there be light.”

“Nice!” Dakota said.

Lance sat back and smiled. The check engine light was on.

“Seatbelt light’s on too,” Mary said. “Battery light. Lookee.”

“Still empty on the gas gauge,” William grumbled. “Speedometer shows zero.”

“Well the car ain’t movin’, William.”

“Have him crank it again.”

Lance tried. The engine grunted, choked.

“Go on. Fire her up!” William lifted his can with a wild-eyed grin.

“I think,” Lance said, forming his words carefully, “we should bring the Buick to a specialist.” Dakota nodded.

“Specialist?” William said. “So, wait. You want to go somewhere else?”

Lance pulled out the key and stared at the dashboard.

“I told you not to bring him here,” Mary whispered.

She led Lance and Dakota into their office, more art gallery than repair shop. The walls were crammed with half-finished oil paintings. A crusty loaf of bread, perfectly textured and lying on a pencil sketch of a table. A crow leaving its invisible perch. The largest piece was a wall-size rendering of the seashore at night: craggy cliffs and sparkling seafoam under a white canvas sky.

Mary rifled through a drawer, then pushed a form across the counter.

Lance paused and read the numbers twice. “One hundred eighty-seven dollars?”

“Yup,” Mary said.

“But you didn’t fix anything!”

“Diagnostics,” Mary said, tapping the invoice. There it was. Circled. Underlined. DIAGNOSTICS. Lance felt the loss of the $187 like the removal of a kidney. He shook his head, denying it.

“Just a minute,” Mary said. “I’ll bring you the keys.”

Lance stepped outside with Dakota. Opposite the Boneyard, a line of hedgerow evergreens caught his eye. Flashes of silver-blue flickered between their branches and without a word, they were walking in that direction. Grass rose from ankle to knee until they reached the living wall and saw, beyond it, the lip of a water-worn ravine. A slope of ferns dipped, then rose and broke off into a wide and wild ocean view.

“Whoa,” Dakota said. “Good eye!”

“I thought there might be something here,” he said.

On the horizon, a small blue suspension bridge.

“Hey,” Lance said. He grabbed his wallet.

“What?” Dakota asked.

He held up the Goodview Towing business card.

“Whoa. Who made this?” Dakota asked.

“Had to be William,” Lance said.

A sound like broken wind chimes. Car keys. It was Mary, walking a deliberate, crooked path in their direction.

“Well there you go,” Mary said, slapping the keys in his palm.

“Thank you,” Lance said.

“Nice view,” Mary said. Her eyes, so blue. Lance hadn’t noticed them before. She glanced back toward the office. “Told him not to let you in the garage. People don’t want to see garages. Kitchens neither. They want it all to be magic.”

Past her, beyond the Boneyard, stood a bigleaf maple. Leaves flapped like green flags and William stood in the shade, smoking a cigarette. His posture was fixed straight up and down. “So why did he want me to come?” Lance asked.

“He said you had the charm.” Mary looked him up and down. He followed her eyes, freshly startled by his clothing. He smoothed out his T-shirt.

“Yep. Will’s old man just charmed them. Had that magic up his sleeves. Couldn’t always tell you what was wrong, but could always make her run. Every time.”

“And William thinks Lance has the charm?” Dakota asked.

“That’s crazy,” Lance said.

“What’s crazy about that?” Mary said. “You got your dash working in five minutes flat.”

“That’s just a trick my dad showed me.” She fixed him with those eyes, like she was reaching under his dashboard and grabbing out his wires. Then she turned toward her husband.

“William don’t have it,” she said plainly.

William had refreshed his cigarette. So still, as if sunk in the earth up to his ankles.

“But, boy,” Mary said. “You should see him paint.”

She walked back through the grass, stalks whispering against her legs.

“What now?” Lance asked.

“I’d call for a tow,” Dakota said. “Maybe get a different driver this time.”

“I feel bad taking my car somewhere else.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Dakota said. “He’s not a mechanic. He’s an artist.”

William hadn’t moved an inch, yet he was transformed. Dakota’s words had changed his appearance the way a photographer might, by adjusting the angle of the camera or the quality of light. His downturned eyes no longer looked defeated, but stoic. He was not lamenting the Buick, just considering colors. Dreaming up his next masterwork.

“You could draw him in your book,” Lance said.

“Oh yes.”

“If he’s an artist, then what are you?” Lance asked.

She smiled like she’d just been caught at something. She looked him over.

“Wardrobe consultant.”

Dakota moved her hair forward a little, curtaining off her eyes.

“Really,” he said. “It just hit me—I have no idea what you do all day.”

“I know,” she said. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Why?”

“Because then we don’t have to talk about it.”

She took a deep breath and patted her pockets, searching for something. He’d said it wrong, and now the answer was locked up inside her. The breeze blew salty-cool air across the field. The leaves chattered and Lance felt a sudden emptiness. There was so much he would never know about her. A sudden feeling of loss, wrapped up in his own name, and the way she’d whispered it the night before. He’d leave this place, and would never stop checking the rearview mirror. He’d be a thousand miles away, ten years older, looking back and asking a question that would not be What do you do all day?

It would be: Whatever happened to Dakota?