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“If I were the driver behind you, I would give you ten more seconds to pick which way you’re turning. But the guy in the Tesla is going to give you five before he honks.” Gramps started counting down. “Four. Three. Two—”

“Ok, ok,” I said grumpily. I signaled and challenged myself to make a left, my least-favorite direction. No, I also disliked backing up.

“You’re distracted,” he stated next. “Again. You’re not paying enough attention to your driving.” He began a familiar lecture about focus and, as usual, he ended with a gruesome story about a driver who had kicked the bucket. This time, it was a woman who’d driven into the Detroit Zoo’s tiger enclosure by mistake and gotten eaten by the big cats there.

“I don’t believe you at all,” I said. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“Look it up!” he challenged. “It happened pre-cell phones so the story didn’t get around as much.”

“Even if it’s old, it’s weird enough that it would have been notable. I could still search for it on my phone. I’m going to the Main Library tomorrow to do some research and I’m definitely going to check on that too, although I know that I won’t find anything.”

He grumbled a little but stopped that to give me advice about how to brake on slippery roads. As night came on, the rain that had fallen earlier was making the pavement slick. Despite my distraction (he was correct about that), I paid careful attention to what he said because he always had good tips.

I thought that my lack of focus during this lesson was understandable. Oliver would have understood, because he said that he was having the same issue. We were both thinking about the song (and now, the glitter). It was why he had recently decided to rent office space in one of the downtown buildings instead of working from home.

“I’m always thinking about it,” he had explained to me. “Every time I walk past the kitchen or go to the bathroom…”

I had nodded, understanding.

“I signed a lease this morning,” he’d concluded. He was also month-to-month at the Milaflores Building now, since his apartment lease had ended. He was actively looking for a home to purchase, but I had warned him about that.

“Moving out may not fix anything,” I’d said.

“I don’t hear it anywhere else. Not my grandfather’s house, not restaurants, the airport, or when I stay in hotels. It’s only here, at the Milaflores Building,” he had told me. “Moving will resolve the situation.”

He liked to refer to our mutual issue as a “situation,” rather than calling it a folie à deux or…well, there was another possible cause for what was happening, although he didn’t want to admit to it. That was what I was going to research at the library tomorrow. At the moment, though, I needed to carefully watch the road for any obstruction, like a wet pile of leaves that might have caused us to go into a slide. Gramps called his car a tank but I didn’t want to be the one to test its structural integrity.

Thankfully, the lesson drew to a close without incident. I assumed that we’d be having dinner as usual, but he didn’t have time tonight. “You and Oliver are going out?” I asked.

“No, he has plans with someone else. I’m, um…” He said something too softly for me to understand. When I glanced over, which he reminded me not to do, I saw that he was blushing slightly.

“Why are you mumbling?” I asked. “Is it a secret?”

“I’m not mumbling! There’s no secret,” he insisted. “It’s too bad that you’ve developed a hearing problem so young.”

I clearly didn’t have a hearing problem. In fact, I was able to pick up on things which only one other person in the world could. As another test, I’d invited Mrs. McGlothen up to the apartment, luring her by saying that it was so cold that I was unable to bend my fingers to type. But she hadn’t noticed anything amiss when I’d turned on the faucet, no sounds or visual effects. And Oliver had tested Gramps at his place weeks before, also with zero results.

“If you don’t want to tell me your secret, that’s fine,” I announced and he didn’t respond.

I pulled into a spot frontways and had also forgotten to signal, and Gramps hadn’t said anything to me about any of it. It showed his own level of distraction and I wondered if it was about his grandson. “What are Oliver’s plans tonight?” I asked casually.

“He’s going out with—well, I was going to call her something rude, but he wouldn’t like that. I should just use her actual name, Medusa.”

“Are you talking about his ex-wife from California? Why would they be going out?” I wondered.

It turned out that the woman was here, in Detroit. Oliver had apparently let that slip to his grandfather but then wouldn’t say anything else about why or how long she would be staying.

“She’s not in the Milaflores Building. I would have seen her,” I said but then questioned my confidence. I did have my desk at the window but I couldn’t watch everything all the time, no matter how hard I tried.

“No, I don’t think she’s with him in his apartment,” Gramps agreed. “I’ve been spying. I even cleaned my front windows so I could see better.”

That was a large step because I couldn’t have imagined how many inches of dirt he’d had to wash away. “Are you worried about him?”

“Yes, I am,” he told me. “I’m very worried. She almost broke him before.” He rubbed his eyes.

“How are you so sure that she did something? Maybe it was mutual, but he just took it hard,” I suggested, but now he was shaking his head.

“If it was mutual then he would have said so. If it was his fault, he would have said that, too. He won’t say anything bad about her.”