Sarah took the keys, her hand shaking slightly. "You don't know what this means to us, Mr. Miller. Thank you." "Just drive safe, Sarah. And get that boy to his doctors."

Clayton Miller sat behind a metal desk cluttered with folders, his fingers tracing the edge of a stack of fresh paperwork. At sixty-two, with grease permanently etched into the lines of his knuckles, he had sold cars to three generations of Boyle County families. He wasn't a franchise dealer with a glass showroom and a balloon arch. He was a Buy Here, Pay Here man. He held the notes, he took the risks, and he knew exactly who was good for fifty bucks on a Friday.

The rain didn’t fall so much as it drifted, a heavy gray mist that clung to the rolling Bluegrass hills and blurred the neon sign of "Miller’s Auto Choice" on the edge of Danville, Kentucky.