Evelyn was fast asleep on the couch, one hand still wrapped around a pencil. Clara stared at the number at the bottom of the page. She didn’t know what made her do it, but she dialed.
A man answered on the third ring. Yeah. Hi.
I’m calling about the garage on Milner. You want to see it? Clara hesitated, then said, yeah, I think I do. By sunrise the next morning, she was standing in front of it.
The place looked every bit as forgotten as she’d imagined. The siding was sun bleached and curling. The bay doors were rusted shut.
A faded sign hung crookedly above the entrance, Whittaker Auto, Est, 1959. The man from the phone, Red Callahan, was already there, thin as wire and wrapped in a denim jacket two sizes too big. She ain’t pretty, he said, unlocking the padlock.
But she’s dry and the roof don’t leak much. Inside, it was a cave of shadows and stale air. Clara stepped through carefully boots crunching broken glass and dried leaves.
The light filtered through dust coated windows. And in that soft gold, she saw more than a ruin. She saw steel beams that hadn’t rusted, concrete floors that hadn’t cracked, and tools.
Dozens of tools hung neatly on pegboards like someone had walked away mid-shift and never come back. I’ll take it, Clara said before she could talk herself out of it. Red blinked.
You don’t want to think it over? No, she said. I’ve already thought too much this year. She paid him on the spot, $3,700, her savings, down to the last dime.
Red handed her one key and one warning. Folks say Bernard Whittaker never let anyone past that back wall. Said there were things in here best left alone.
Clara tucked the key into her pocket. Well, lucky for me, I’m too broke to be superstitious. Later that night, after Evelyn went to bed, Clara returned to the garage with a flashlight and a crowbar.
She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Maybe closure. Maybe a distraction from the rent she no longer had money to pay.
