“I do, Mr. Whitaker,” I said, and I laid my hand on the deed. “I bought this house in August, through a company I named for the ridge behind it. I also sold Blue Ridge Carpet Care in July, all nine vans, for five million six hundred thousand dollars. I told no one, because I wanted to see how my son treated his mother when he thought all she had was a spare room and a steam cleaner.” The father of Brooke read the deed twice. On the stove, the clock ticked. Out the window, the leaves were turning red on the mountains, and the whole valley glowed as though someone had lit a lamp beneath it.
Jared found his voice slowly. “Mom, you are making a big deal out of nothing. The dealer in Hendersonville must have made a mistake.” “He wrote you a check for thirty one thousand dollars, son,” I said. “I have the stub. You handed me nine thousand in an envelope and told me it was the best you could do.” I slid the title transfer across the table. “Your father proposed to me in that Mustang at the Biltmore Dairy Bar in nineteen sixty six. It was Wimbledon White, with a red interior. I never signed this paper. Somebody signed it for me, and that somebody sat at my table last Christmas and ate my pie.”
Brooke put down her glass of wine with a shaking hand. “Jared, the Jeep. You said it was a loan from your buddy.” “It was a loan, Brooke,” Jared said. “From whom?” she asked quietly. He did not answer. Her father laid the title transfer carefully on the table and smoothed it flat. “Son,” he said, “where I come from, a man who sells the car of his father and keeps the difference is not a man I want at the table of my daughter.” Nobody at that table moved. I took the old key of Lyle from my purse, the one with the Ford pony on the fob, and laid it on the cloth.
A Ford Mustang key with a pony on the fob gave one son the weekend to bring his mother back to the kitchen in Asheville.
I spoke slowly, so there would be no misunderstanding. “Here are my terms, Jared. You will give me the twenty two thousand dollars you kept, in full, and you will do it by the end of the month. You will return the Jeep to the dealer and sell it if you must. And you will drive with me to Hendersonville tomorrow morning, and we will find out whether the Mustang is still there. If it is, you will buy it back at whatever price the dealer asks, and you will pay for it yourself.” Jared nodded. His face had lost all its color. Brooke sat motionless with her hands in her lap.
On Saturday morning we drove to the dealership in Hendersonville, and I found a surprise waiting. The dealer, an old gentleman named Mr. Ferrell, was standing on the lot in a bow tie. Behind him sat the Mustang, still Wimbledon White, polished and gleaming in the sun. He took off his hat. “Mrs. Ledbetter, I have been in this trade fifty years, and I knew the minute I saw that title that something was wrong,” he said. “I could not sell the car. I put it in the back of the showroom and waited for someone to call.” I put my hand on the hood, and my eyes filled.
The money consequences came quickly. Mr. Ferrell agreed to sell the Mustang back for the same thirty one thousand dollars he had paid, and he refused to add a cent of profit. Jared had to sell the Jeep and take a loss of seven thousand to find the money. The father of Brooke, who had offered to help the couple buy a house in Weaverville, withdrew the offer until he could see a year of honest work. Jared took a second job delivering parts for a tire distributor on weekends. For the first time in his life, he was paying for something he had broken.
I did not want to be bitter. With part of the sale money, I started a fund in the name of Lyle. The Lyle Ledbetter Fund pays for the tools, training and first uniform of any young person in Buncombe County who wants to start a cleaning or restoration business and cannot afford the equipment. We held the first class in the old Blue Ridge Carpet Care warehouse on a bright October morning. Nineteen students signed up, and one of them, a girl named Marisol, arrived early to polish the steam machine until it shone. Lyle would have loved her for that.
Brooke came to see me on a rainy Sunday, carrying a pie that she had baked from scratch. It was sweet potato, a little lopsided. She stood in my doorway and said, “Mrs. Ledbetter, I have been ashamed since the night I held that glass of wine.” I told her that being fooled by someone you love is not a crime. We ate the pie at the kitchen table with a pot of coffee, and I told her about Lyle and the Mustang, and the Dairy Bar, and the ring he gave me in a paper napkin. By the end of the afternoon, she was laughing through her tears.
Jared came to the warehouse at six in the morning on the first Monday, as I had asked. I handed him a pair of gloves and pointed at a steam cleaner that had been sitting through the winter. For four hours he took it apart, cleaned it and put it together again. His hands were black to the wrists. At noon, he sat on an upturned bucket with a sandwich, and the foreman sat beside him. “It is not about the machine, son,” he said. “It is about leaving a house cleaner than you found it.” Jared nodded slowly, and I watched from the doorway and saw him grow up a little.
On the first Saturday in November, I drove the Mustang up the Blue Ridge Parkway, with the windows down and the maples blazing red and gold on either side. Jared sat in the passenger seat with the old key in his hand. At the overlook near Craggy Gardens, I pulled over and shut off the engine. For a long time we sat looking at the mountains, saying nothing. “Mom,” he said at last, “would you teach me to drive it properly?” I handed him the key. “Your father would like that,” I said. “First, you ease the clutch, and then you listen.”
