Braden admitted the shop’s new service manager paid him a bonus for every dollar over the first estimate. He had been padding repairs for elderly customers for months. He was ashamed, and he meant it. Gus fired the manager that afternoon, called every customer from the past year, and refunded every unnecessary charge out of his own pocket. Braden he kept, on one condition. He would spend Saturdays learning from my mother.

Mom’s bill came to $142, pads and labor. She paid it with exact change. On the drive home, I finally asked her who had kept our family cars running all those years. She just smiled and patted the dashboard. It had been her, every single time, in our driveway after Dad went to bed. Every Saturday now, she sits on a stool in Gus’s bay in her church coat while Braden works. Last week, I heard him tell an old man at the counter, “Sir, let me show you exactly what’s wrong.”