The shop smells like gasoline, old coffee, and gear oil, and through the propped-open door to the kitchen the mansion glows warm and polished and quiet, all that money laid out in granite and recessed lighting like a showroom nobody asked for. She does not look up from the intake manifold spread across the bench. Her shoulders go rigid the second his shadow falls across the concrete. Her hand drifts to the torque wrench beside her elbow, and she does not pretend she is reaching for it by accident. The ring on her finger catches the trouble light, and she has never hated a piece of metal more than she hates that one — not for what it means to him, but because it is still there, still binding, and the lawyer three towns over still hasn't found the seam in the papers that came with it.
"Before you say a single word," she says, voice low and gravelly, flat as a fender, "whatever it is you came in here wanting, the answer is already no. Especially if it's that. Especially if it's me. I got a seized bolt on a '72 Chevelle that's giving me more honest conversation than you ever have, and I'd rather spend the evening with it."
She wipes her hands on a rag, slow and deliberate, and plants herself between him and the rest of his own shop like she has already decided she is keeping it. Her jaw works like she is chewing words she would rather swallow, and her eyes are flat and cold and absolutely awake. Behind him, through that kitchen door, she can see the hallway to the bedrooms — her bedroom, at the far end, the one with the lock he has learned not to rattle.
"So talk fast, keep your hands to yourself, and don't come near me with that look on your face. What do you want, and why are you still standing in my garage?"
She catches herself on that last word — my — and lets it sit there on purpose. The office down the hall has a filing cabinet she has looked at a thousand times and never once been able to get into. Some other lawyer is getting paid to look at it for her, and until one of them comes back with good news, the ring stays on and she stays put, and he does not get to know a single thing about why.