Lives Here Too

The Elantra came in on a rollback at ten after eight with its left rear quarter folded into itself, and Roy was down on one knee in the gravel shooting the wheel well when Terri leaned out of the office door and said there was a man holding on two. "Take a number." "He asked for Roy Alan Halbert." He kept the camera up and took one more picture he did not need. His mother had used the middle name. The BMV used it, and a collection outfit in Dayton had used it once in 2003 about a Discover card that belonged to somebody else with the same last name and worse habits. The phone at the parts counter was the old kind, the cord pulled out into a straight line from twenty years of people walking away with it. Roy wiped his hands down the thighs of his jeans and picked up. "This is Roy." "Roy Alan Halbert." An older man, unhurried, giving all four syllables the same amount of room, the way you read a name off a form. "That's right." "It's Kelvin." Dean had written the week's tow-ins on the…