Close enough to listen.
“Carbon fiber package,” the salesman said. “Custom interior trim. Premium upgrade. One of the best configurations we’ve had this year.”
“It’s exactly what we wanted,” Whitney said, delighted. “Can we take it today?”
“As soon as payment clears.”
Whitney clapped her hands once, softly, like a girl receiving a birthday gift.
“Our neighbors are going to lose their minds when we pull up in this,” she said.
That was why.
Not need.
Not safety.
Not work.
Neighbors.
They followed the salesman into a glass office. I pretended to examine another car while watching through the transparent wall. Baxter took out his wallet. Then he held up a dark blue credit card.
Mine.
Even from across the showroom, I recognized it.
Not because of the bank logo alone. Because that card had a small scratch near the lower corner, a scratch I had noticed months ago and ignored because I rarely used it. Somehow, he had copied it or taken it long enough to make a duplicate. The details did not matter yet. The fact did.
I walked out of the showroom and sat in my Cadillac with both hands on the steering wheel.
Then I called the bank again and confirmed the card was blocked.
Fifteen minutes later, Baxter and Whitney came out of Premium Motors.
Baxter’s face was pale. Whitney’s was bright with anger.
“What do you mean the card is blocked?” she snapped, loud enough that I heard her through my closed window. “Do you have any idea how humiliating this is?”
Baxter held the phone to his ear, moving his free hand helplessly.
“You promised me this car,” she said. “You said it was settled with your father.”
Settled.
So that was the story he had given her.
I waited until they drove off, then went back inside and spoke to the salesman. He confirmed the attempted purchase. The contract price had been two hundred thirty-five thousand dollars. He also told me they had been in several times over the past month choosing options.
This had not been a panic.
It had been a plan.
I drove home, or at least I meant to. But as I pulled out of the lot, I saw Baxter’s Lexus turning back toward the dealership. They had returned.
Something in me hardened.
I parked again and followed them inside.
They were already with the salesman, Whitney smiling as if the earlier embarrassment had been a minor inconvenience.
“Just a misunderstanding with the bank,” Baxter was saying. “We’d like to proceed with a different card.”
“Hello, Baxter,” I said.
He turned.
The color left his face so quickly I thought for a second he might be ill.
“Dad.”
Whitney froze, her smile suspended in a shape that no longer belonged to her face.
“What are you doing here?” Baxter asked.
“I could ask you the same thing, but I already know. You’re trying to buy a two-hundred-thirty-five-thousand-dollar car using my credit card without my authorization.”
People nearby did what polite people do in expensive places. They pretended not to listen while listening with their entire bodies.
Whitney recovered first.
“You followed us?”