In front of me on the street, a minor traffic jam was building. After we got back from our walk, I’d told Cat I needed to go to the library and look for some old records about the bar; if it really had stood there for a hundred years unaltered, then it was potentially pretty important itself. The truth was, I couldn’t look at her face right now; the needles were red-hot and painful on my conscience.

I should have told her what I know about the fossils already. I should have asked her to come with me. But I couldn’t. This was the only place she’d found her own happiness on her own terms; she’d said that herself. Why would she go anywhere with the guy who was taking that from her?

I wasn’t the sort of man to brood—brooding was for teenage vampires and Edwardian rakes—but if I were, I’d be having a Triple-A Brood right about now.

My chest tightened, and the thought of going away and not seeing Cat again gave me a flush of anger; not at her, but at myself for being so Goddamned stupid as to get involved with someone I was never going to see again. I remembered my Mom’s voice on the phone, quiet and insistent.

“Find a solution. Make it work.”

I can’t, Mom. As much as I wish there was one, there isn’t.

As I got closer to the traffic jam, I could see the cause; a battered Ford truck was stopped in the middle of the intersection. Other cars were carefully pulling out around it, but it had evidently stalled halfway through a turn, and not started again. While I watched, the door opened and a short dark-haired woman in overalls got out; I could tell from her body language even at this distance that she wasn’t happy. She braced herself against the door, and began to push, but despite her square shoulders and athletic build, she wasn’t heavy enough to move it easily, and the vehicle began to roll with glacial slowness.

“Hey, want a hand? What happened?” I jogged up alongside her, bent forward with her shoulder to the door, and she looked up with a frown.

“What?” She paused; I could tell she wasn’t really used to accepting help from people, but in the end common sense won out. “Yeah, that’d be good. I was on the way back from the hospital, and she died on me. Get to the bumper and see what you can do.”

I went to the back of the car, and braced myself. The old Ford had seen better days; the bodywork was dented, and the back seats had evidently been removed some years ago to make room for storing tools and car-parts. I leaned into the truck, and with our combined strength, it started to roll more quickly, out of the intersection, and up onto the curb.

Steering the car with one hand, she called back to me. “Keep going! I want it up on the grass over there.” After a final push, the car rolled to a stop on the grass, and she reached inside, popping the hood and rummaging for tools. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I came around the front.

In a moment, she emerged from the truck, holding a toolbox, talking to herself. “Dammit. I knew I should have done something with that fuel pump.” She looked up at me. “You’re Ryan, right? The egghead guy? My little brother told me about you.”

Egghead? “Yeah, I guess I am. You must be Beatrice Macfarlane? Andy’s sister?”

She frowned at me. “Just Bea will do.” Opening the hood, she leaned into the engine, hands moving quickly, still muttering.

I watched her for a moment, not saying anything. I had a suspicion that she wasn’t as scary as she liked to make out, but I was prepared to humor her. After a few minutes, she spoke, although she didn’t stop working.

“You know I’m pretty pissed at your girlfriend, right?”

I thought carefully. “Yeah, so I understand.” Is Cat my girlfriend?

“Don’t try and tell me otherwise.”

“Wasn’t going to.” I had to suppress a smile, although she couldn’t see me.

“She should have told me what was going on. Andy never damn well takes care of himself, and I would have told her that if she’d asked me.”

“Bea,” I chose my words carefully, “remember that Cat was in an impossible situation. If she’d told you, she would have felt like she was betraying Andy. He came to her for help, and she helped him as best she could. You know she made him promise that he’d see a doctor, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was noncommittal.

“Cat tries to do good for everybody, but it doesn’t always work out that way.” And it doesn’t seem to have helped her much, I thought.

“Sure. Whatever.” There was a clank noise of metal on metal inside the engine, and a grunt from Bea. “Got you, you bast—” She stopped. “No, wait. That’s not it, because there’s still fuel in the line. Must be further up.”

“So,” I tried to change the subject, “how did you and Andy end up here, anyway?”

Clank, clank, from inside the engine. “We just ended up here. Had a job in a garage in the city; didn’t like it. We were driving in the car on a trip, and we broke down just outside of town. Realized there was no garage.”

“And you figured there was a demand for one?”

“Yeah, and someone who knows machinery generally.” One hand emerged from the hood. “Pass me that wrench, will you?”

I handed it to her, and it disappeared. “And you got the warehouse cheap?”

“It was basically abandoned. We tracked down the guy who owned it from council records, and he’d forgotten it was there, so now we have a five-year lease for basically beer money. Good deal. So we just stayed.”

“Do you ever think about going anywhere else?”

“No. Didn’t have anything to go back to the city for anyway.”

Scratching my chin, I squatted down to look at the engine. Although the rest of the vehicle was beaten-up, I could tell that the engine had been carefully maintained; what grease there was, was in the right places, and the hoses were shiny and new. “I guess it’s good when you feel like you belong here.” I’d never felt that way myself, but I was beginning to understand how others might.

“Belong?” There was an audible snort from beneath the hood. “Beats me. I don’t really care about belonging places. We’ve got work and no-one telling us what to do. That’s all I care about.” She backed out of the hood, carefully, and looked at me.

”So no men?” I said, with a grin. Bea’s eyes narrowed and she slapped the wrench into my hand. “Don’t go getting ideas, Egghead. You’re not my type. Besides, if Andy’s really sick, I’m gonna need your girlfriend.” She dived back under the hood. “Where’s that—oh, there it is.”

“She’s going to need you too, you know.”

“Yeah, the oven. I get it. When she’s got the money, I’ll do the work. Simple.”

“No, it’s more than that. She’s going to need you for reassurance.” I leaned on the car. Bea’s head stayed buried in the engine, but her hands had stopped moving on the distributor cap.

“She’s got friends. I’m not exactly her friend.”

I nodded, although Bea couldn’t see me again. “Yeah, she does. But she’s going to need all the help she can get when I leave.”

“Right.” There was a pause. “When’s that?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I summoned up my courage; I had to tell someone. “I was going to ask her to come with me, but now I realize that she won’t go, even if it’s the right thing for her. Besides, I don’t see why she would.”

“Right.” Another noise of tightening screws, and Bea backed out from under the hood again. “That should do it. Get in the car and turn her over for me, would you?”

I lodged myself in the front seat; Bea was a lot shorter than me, and it was a squash to fit myself in. I turned the key, and the ignition coughed. Once, twice, then died.

Bea swore. “Still not enough fuel in the line.” She reached into the car. “Turn it over again in a second when I say so. Not yet or I’ll get spiked by the battery.” I heard a scraping sound. “Okay, now.”

Turning the key again, the ignition stuttered, and the engine came to life with a deep growl. I put the accelerator down, and the engine roared, then settled down to a steady thrum as I eased off. Unfolding myself from the driver’s seat, I watched as Bea dropped the hood and smacked her hands together in satisfaction.

“Okay, that’ll keep me going until I can make it back to the garage and dig out a replacement pump.” She looked up at me, dark eyes under strong brows. “Do you care about her?”

The question caught me by surprise. “Well…yeah. I do. Being with her…makes everything make more sense, for some reason.”

“Huh.” Walking to the door, she yanked the handle, which rattled like it was about to come off. “Look, I’m not exactly relationship advice material, but it seems to me you need to decide what’s important here, and follow that no matter where it leads. You don’t get much in this life if you aren’t ready to fight for it.”

“I guess so.”

Bea climbed in the truck and shut the door, then peered at me through the window. “You okay, Egghead? You need a lift somewhere? I mean, I can’t exactly stop, but if you don’t mind jumping out while I slow down, I can maybe do that.”

I was about to refuse; a re-enactment of a cop show with me bailing out of a car at speed wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I thought for a minute. It was kind of her to offer. “Yeah, thanks. Can you drop me off at the library? I need to look at some more records about the bar.”

She gestured to the passenger’s side. “That figures. Library it is, then.”

Once inside, I found there was much more room on the passenger’s side seat; it was set way back. Bea noticed me looking at it.

“Andy usually sits there, right?”

She looked down for a minute at the gauges and nodded. “Guess I’m going to be doing all the driving from now on, if…”. Tailing off, she shook her head and reached for the handbrake. “No point worrying about it now.”

I wanted to say it’s going to be okay, or some variant of the same sentiment, but it sounded hollow in my head, and I figured she wouldn’t appreciate it; something told me that Bea would be pretty scathing about platitudes.

Not that she’d use the word ‘platitudes’, I thought; the word ‘bullshit’ was probably more her speed.

The truck pulled off the grass and jolted onto the street, moving into the sparse traffic. Once the engine was running, it went well; I wasn’t a mechanic, but I could tell the smooth burble of a well-maintained engine, and it didn’t surge at low speeds or stutter. As she drove, I looked at Bea. She had an air of determination, just like Cat, but where Cat was tall and measured and self-assured, Bea was compact and fierce, spiky and almost combative in her movements.

She and her brother were similar in appearance, but so different in manner; Andy was outgoing and accepting of people, quick to laugh and share a joke. His sister looked at people with a guardedness that verged on distrust, and I wondered about what had happened to them that should have made them so different.

We lurched around a corner, and I could see the old fascia of the library approaching. The building was small, but pretty, built about sixty years ago from pale sandstone quarried a little way inland, and in the afternoon sun it glowed with a pale reflected light. I grabbed my bag from the back. “This is my stop, cabbie.”

“Very funny.” Bea slowed down, and the car trundled almost to a halt. “Can you jump for it? I’d stop, but I’m afraid this car isn’t going to start again.”

“No problem,” I grinned, “Watch my Evel Knievel act.” Opening the door, I paused. “Hey, let me know what happens with Andy, okay? Sometimes…sometimes it’s reassuring to know that someone’s got some good news.”

Bea shrugged. “Sure. Thanks for the push, Egghead.”