The Big Cat Nap

That’s what they’re for. A deer crashed through her windshield.”
    “But when did they deploy? Look, when Miranda and I careened off the road, the air bags blew up. She couldn’t see. How she got usto the side of the road and stopped, I have no idea. Air bags are supposed to deploy in a collision. We had no collision or hard bumps really. They shouldn’t have deployed. Miranda’s a lot better driver than I thought—not that I’d say that to her, because then I’d let her know I had qualms about both her abilities and her age.”
    “Sometimes you actually can do the right thing.” Susan smiled at Harry.
    “I’m trying. I’ve got to find out about Tara’s car.”
    “You’re not going to trouble her parents? Harry, you can’t do that.”
    “I won’t. I really would like to talk to them, but I promise I won’t. I asked Herb a little about it, since he’s been calling on them. She was insured by Safe and Sound.”
    “So are a lot of other people. It’s a huge mid-Atlantic company.”
    “A very successful one, and we all more or less like Latigo Bly. Somehow, though, it’s hard for me to completely trust a man who changed his name legally from Alphonse to Latigo.”
    Susan put down her BLT lest she drop it, she was laughing so hard. “Harry.”
    “Really? Latigo? He could have changed his name to Tom, John, Robert. If he wanted to sound younger, how about Jordan? But Latigo?”
    Susan laughed all the harder. “Dakota, Travis, Brett, Randy, Caleb. Are those in the same category?”
    “No. They’re generational, but Latigo? Have you ever heard of anyone named after a rope?”
    “You’re right. He could have picked a horse—Secretariat. Secretariat Bly.”
    The silliness escalated, which meant it was turning out to be a perfect lunch.
    On the way back, Harry drove, loving the short throw between shifts. “Victor is Lucifer. He knew I’d fall in love with this car.”
    “Anyone who knows you would know you’d go gaga over high performance. Didn’t take a rocket scientist. BoomBoom driven it yet?”
    “I’ll pick her up at the concrete plant tomorrow.”
    “Think this car’s haunted?”
    “No.” She climbed Afton Mountain. “I think about Nick, though, sitting in this seat.”
    “It will do me no good to tell you to be careful.”
    In her own way, Harry was being careful. She didn’t tell Susan what her hunch was, because she was afraid it would set her friend off and, also, she was far from sure. Why cast a shadow on a seemingly good person until one was sure?
    So Harry changed the subject, a favorite tactic. “Yancy Hampton is coming back to check out my ginseng in July, when the little berries show up. Do you know in some places ginseng is bringing five hundred dollars a pound! Growers in New York get that—not all of them, but they’re averaging between three hundred and four hundred dollars a pound.”
    Drily, Susan said, “Yancy isn’t going to offer you that.”
    “I know.” Harry shifted into fourth gear. “I have both cultivated and wild ginseng down by the creek. Ginseng loves it there, with all the shade and moisture.”
    “Takes ginseng a long time to produce seeds, doesn’t it?” Susan remembered sitting down at the creek with Harry as children, dipping their toes in the cold water.
    “Three to four years. But, remember, my wild ginseng is well established. The cultivated stuff I planted last year—well, I have a wait on that.”
    Susan changed the subject. “Ever miss the P.O.?”
    “All the time. Really was Crozet’s hub.”
    “Yeah. The new building is big, clean, and light, but you can’t hang out there like we could at the old P.O. George Hogendobber used to give us licorice sticks. Who would have ever thought you’d graduate from Smith College and become our postmistress?”
    “Not me. I thought I was filling in until I found my real job and the postmaster general found a real postmistress.”
    “You never talk about it.” Susan looked at her friend’s profile.
    “What’s to say? The new building outgrew me, I guess. Couldn’t take Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, or Tucker to work. Those two cats couldroll the mail carts as well as I could.” Harry smiled. “Everything’s changed, Susan. Sometimes I feel old. I know I’m not, but … oh, I don’t know.”
    “We have memory now. We can compare things. Couldn’t do that at age six.”
    Harry thought about that. “Change is life, I guess.”
    “It is.” Susan took a breath as Harry