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“It’s about an hour from here but that’s not the reason she moved. It sounds like it was a good opportunity for her,” he told me.

Sure it was. It was a good opportunity to get closer to him, the man she was still in love with. I’d seen this exact scenario with Daisuke and my mom, even after he’d gotten busted for his drug operation—she had continued to go back to him, finding new reasons to want to live close to where he was imprisoned in Chino.

“You went to dinner and talked about the past,” I guessed. “Did she apologize?”

“Our issues are over,” he said. “I don’t want to rehash them with Gramps or with you, Kat. Ok?”

I nodded and my lips were back to being sealed. Mostly.

“We could stop in and talk to him for a minute before we go to the library. He’s very worried,” I said. “He even washed the shop windows so that he could see you better.”

“Damn, I don’t know the last time that happened,” he marveled. “All right, let’s go to the record shop.”

We left there a little while later. Oliver acted totally unfazed and normal, as normal as someone hearing mysterious music and seeing glitter could be. His grandfather seemed to relax, since he could witness that his grandson hadn’t taken to his bed and stopped eating. Oliver was fine and we were on our way to the library soon enough, with me in the passenger seat.

“Maybe I’ll drive next time, or maybe it would be a better idea to wait until I have my actual, plastic license. It should come in the mail a few weeks after I pass the road test,” I said. If I passed the road test.

“Something’s making you nervous,” he pointed out. “Is it driving with me instead of Gramps or is it driving this car?” He seemed to have no fear about descending from the second level of this parking garage, even with the concrete walls that were very close, in my opinion.

“It’s both,” I answered. “I wouldn’t want to hurt your new car and I’m not used to driving with you. Your grandfather’s hearse has a brake on his side, so he could stop us if there was an emergency.”

“How many times has he used that?”

“None. I’m very careful,” I explained.

“You just like having the security of it. Just in case.”

I nodded, although if his eyes were on the road where they should have been, he wouldn’t have been able to see me. “I was thinking about buying my own car. I guess that I should.”

“Can you afford it?”

I nodded again. “I wouldn’t get something super expensive. I would also be too nervous to drive anything like that.”

We discussed various vehicle options for me and his suggestions were sensible, stable, and serious. He didn’t say anything about a yellow convertible, like my mom had driven until we’d broken the axel in Colorado because she’d wanted to venture into the mountains on an uncharted path. Sports cars weren’t very good at that.

“Those all sound good,” I said. They were exactly right for someone like me, someone who was sensible, stable, and serious.

“Better gas mileage with the Soso V6,” he continued. “But the Rollo has a lot of cargo space, in case you’re thinking about additional furniture shopping. The more you have, the more you’ll have to move.”

“I’m not considering a move,” I told him.

“Why not? With this happening, why would you want to stay in the Milaflores Building?”

“I don’t want to go,” I said. I remembered saying the same thing to my mom, many times. We’d lived in a great place in Georgia, in a neighborhood with other kids where I thought I might have made friends. I’d liked another place in South Carolina near the beach, but we’d left there, too. “I don’t have to move anymore.”

“You’re the person who told me that I shouldn’t stay if I was unhappy there,” Oliver reminded me.

“But I’m not unhappy.”

“Really?” He sounded extremely doubtful. “You’re not unhappy in a place where you hear phantom music?”

“It made me upset when I thought that I was the only one hearing it. Now I don’t care as much and I think the glitter is pretty,” I answered. I could feel him staring at me, a bad idea as a driver, but I kept looking forward.

The Detroit Public Library, the main one, was a stone building completed in 1921, facilitated by a gift from the same Andrew Carnegie who had donated the money for the La Grieta Library. This was a whole lot bigger, though—more like a castle of grey stone and the inside was stunning. It reminded me of the lobby of the Milaflores Building, which made sense. They were built around the same time.

After we split up to start on our research, I walked around looking at everything. I found the Children’s Library, where kids could come and hear storytime, but it made me nervous as I remembered the last experience I’d had with that. I left and got to work. There was more here about our apartment building, like newspaper advertisements from when it first opened. Those offered maid service, complete kitchens, an elevator, wall safes, a formal garden, a convenient location with transportation options, bathrooms with showers, and steam heat (it didn’t mention that there were no separate thermostats). The pictures of the lobby, with the vaulted ceiling and beautiful tilework, showed that it hadn’t changed that much. I printed all that.

I also found more ads for Jasper the Great, pointing to appearances all over Metro Detroit. The librarian even came across an interview from the sixties in which Jasper discussed his balloon animals and sleight of hand skills. I printed that off, too.