My father’s first affair happened when I was in third grade.

At the time, I didn’t know what was going on, only that my parents were acting all stiff and weird and having lots of long conversations in their bedroom with the door closed. I remember that time like a dream or the way you remember being really sick. I think it only lasted a few weeks and then slowly everybody started acting normal again, but it felt like months. It was the first time I’d ever imagined the possibility that our family might fly to pieces, and it scared me worse than anything.

The short version that I eventually pieced together from eavesdropping on some of my mom’s phone calls was that my dad had an affair with one of his clients, and my mom found out about it. For a while it looked like they might get divorced, but after going to counseling they figured things out and everything was sort of okay again.

I don’t think either of them knew how much it messed me up knowing that something had gone horribly wrong, even though I didn’t understand at the time what it was about. It helped to finally figure out the truth. I don’t think most parents realize that little kids are super-sensitive even though they might not really understand anything about what’s going on. Like Chipper, the time I was little and painted him green. He didn’t know he was green because dogs are color-blind too, but he knew something was wrong, and for that whole month of being green he slunk around all mopey and ashamed.

The déjà vu feeling wasn’t just in my head, I decided. I was guessing my mom had found something—lipstick on my dad’s collar or whatever—and they’d had a “talk,” and that was why she’d started drinking wine and let me drive to the airport by myself and why they’d been acting civil mostly for my benefit while my dad tried to get Elwin Carl Dandridge off on a technicality. I ran up to my room and closed the door, but I was still in the same house with them so I went back downstairs where my dad was in his study on his laptop and my mom was furiously chopping celery. I grabbed the keys to Mom’s Camry.

“I’m going for a ride,” I said.

She stared at me openmouthed, but she didn’t say a word. Five minutes later I was on the freeway in rush hour traffic, pretending to be a commuter.

I am not an idiot. I knew I was “acting out,” as my mother would put it. “Acting like a brat” is probably more accurate. And I knew even as I was doing it that I was doing it because I was pissed at both of my parents and because taking my mom’s car made me feel as if I had some control over things that of course I could do nothing whatsoever about.

I also figured that I’d pay some sort of price, because taking my mom’s car was not the sort of thing responsible parents could overlook, so to make the most of it I ran around town listening to the radio until the gas gauge was lit up on empty, then drove home and left the car sitting inconveniently in the middle of the driveway. It was almost eleven at night by that time. The light in my parents’ bedroom was on, but that was it. No porch light or anything. I let myself in through the side door.

The house was deathly quiet. I had a sudden and horrible fantasy of my mother shooting my father and then killing herself—the thought came and went in a flash, leaving behind a faint sensation of nausea. I sat down in the kitchen and waited for my stomach to settle. A minute or so later I heard a faint murmuring coming from upstairs. I couldn’t understand any words, but I recognized the sound of my mother’s voice, so I crept up the carpeted stairs and stood outside the bedroom door. Definitely my mother talking. My dad wasn’t saying anything. I could hear parts of what she was saying: “He said he frud ammin…” (silence) “No! I don’t think so, but last week—no, it was the week before I sobel greshat…force cure rattle…”

I sat down with my back to the wall and pressed my ear to the crack.

“…lived with the man a long time, Beck.”

She was on the phone, talking to her friend Becca.

I wondered where my dad was.

“He says he still loves me but he would say that—I mean, Beck, he’s a goddamn lawyer for Christ’s sake! The bullshit that comes out of his mouth!”

I’d never ever heard my mom talk like that.

“I know, I know, Beck, but I’m not going to jump before I know where I’m standing. Christ, I wish you were here. I need a martini.”

I listened to my mother’s profane bitching for about ten more minutes, learning nothing other than that all men are scum. I wondered if she was ever going to mention the astonishing fact that her underage and unlicensed daughter had driven off that very evening in the family car, but it never came up.

My dad, it turned out, was asleep on the sofa in his study.

The next morning, everything was eerily normal. My mother made breakfast and my dad asked me how I had slept—he always asked me that in the morning, and I always said “fine.” Nobody said a word about me taking the car the night before. I thought that was kind of odd, but then I figured out that they were each afraid that if they brought up my car thing, we would have to talk, and if we really started talking, we’d end up talking about why Dad slept on the sofa and what was going on with them. None of us wanted that.

The truth is that most car thefts are never reported to the police. In fact, many car thefts go undetected, as the car is often returned to its owner with nothing missing but a little gasoline.

My parents must have had one of their “civilized” conversations, because the next night they slept in the same bed and for a few days we lived like perfect people in a perfect house where nothing bad had ever happened. I imagine their conversation went something like this:

“I hate and despise you for your philandering, dear, but I think we should wait for Kelleigh to get out of high school before we tear each other apart in divorce court.”

“I agree absolutely, sweetie pie! That will give me time to enjoy a good deal of illicit sexual activity during Kelleigh’s happy high school years.”

“That’s lovely, honeybunch, so long as you promise to be discreet, and so long as you do not attempt to conceal your assets in some offshore bank account.”

“I promise, lovemuffin, so long as I can count on you not to tear my testicles out by their roots during our time together in court!”

Or something like that.

What bothered me most was how happy my dad seemed. He had a guilty rapist to defend, an affair to finance, and quite possibly a divorce to engineer. He was buzzing with purpose and holy zeal, a man on a mission. I got all that not from anything he said but just from watching the way he held his mouth and the crispness of his motions even at the breakfast table, and the way he talked on his phone, very terse and efficient, as if his every second was incredibly valuable. I sensed that his happiness—my dad’s version of happiness, which was kind of the same as purposefulness, if that’s a word—was all about having something important to do.

Two days later I called Deke. He was in a foul mood. His guy at the Mercedes dealership wouldn’t give him his five hundred dollars back and wouldn’t sell him another key.

“He says he’s got to cool it for a couple months. Anyway, it makes no difference to you.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Yeah. You said you didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“No I didn’t.”

“I thought you did.”

“I said I wasn’t sure.”

“That’s what people say when they mean no.”

“Not this people.”

He didn’t say anything.

I said, “So you can’t get another key?”

“I didn’t say that. You busy tonight?”

I told my mom I was having dinner at Jen’s, then had Deke pick me up at the Cub Foods near my house. He showed up twenty minutes late, wearing his standard uniform: T-shirt, ripped jeans, and motorcycle boots. I was dressed in my usual nun chic: gray blouse with black pants. Very much the odd couple. Not that I thought it was a date or anything.

Deke was in a talkative mood. In fact, he wouldn’t shut up, but most of what he said was pretty interesting.

“Most guys who steal cars are after those crappy ‘C’ cars: Camrys, Corollas, Cieras, Civics, Caravans,” he said. “Cars that sell in the millions. They like ’em five or ten years old, ‘cause that’s when they start to fall apart, so there’s a bigger demand for parts. Plus those older cars are easy to boost. No security systems or anything. A guy who knows what he’s doing can pop the door with a slim jim, get inside, and hot-wire ’em in like thirty seconds.

“Anyways, they sell these crappy cars to a chop shop, where they get broken up and sold for parts. You know that junkyard up on Washington Avenue?”

I didn’t.

“Major chop shop. But there’s not much money in it for the guys doing the boosting. Guy steals a Honda and sells it to a chop shop for a quick hundred bucks cash, then goes and spends it on dope. Me, I cater to the classier side of the business, the Benzes and Beamers and such. Cars like that don’t get chopped. They go to Canada, Mexico, South America. Neal takes orders from all over, mostly from dealers who can give ’em a new VIN and hide ’em in a boat full of legitimate vehicles.”

I was fascinated by the way he’d slipped into using three-and four-syllable words, like “legitimate vehicles,” and by how different it was from listening to Will.

We were in Deke’s pickup, driving east on Highway 36. It seemed weird to me that a guy who specialized in stealing high-end luxury cars would drive a junky old pickup, so I asked him about that.

“Camouflage,” he said. “Also, my parole officer would wonder how I could afford a nice car on my two-hundred-dollar paycheck from Wing’s Wild Wok.”

“How about a motorcycle?” I imagined myself on the back of a motorcycle with Deke driving.

Deke shrugged. “Bikes scare me,” he said. “I had a friend who got killed.”

We were driving toward Stillwater, a town west of St. Paul on the St. Croix River. Danny, Deke’s backup key guy, worked at a restaurant in Stillwater called La Bellevue, a super-pricey French place. Danny was a valet.

Fancy restaurants, Deke told me, are a great place to score car keys, because a lot of supposedly smart rich people who spend big bucks on their food and their rides are stupid enough to hand their car keys to a valet, giving him the opportunity to go through the glove compartment and get information like the VIN number, the name and address of the owner, and the dealership where the car was purchased. Sometimes even a spare key—which if you think about it is an incredibly stupid thing to leave inside your car. But a lot of people do it, according to Deke.

Danny was just one of five guys Deke had looking for an S550 key. “I made some good connections when I was in jail,” Deke told me. “It was like going to crime school. I got a couple valets, a mechanic down at Walton Motors, a guy who works at this detailing shop, and the parts guy at Bolton Benz. Problem is, these S550s, there just aren’t that many. They cost like a hundred grand each. It’s not like there’s one on every block, and half of ’em you just can’t get to, ’cause they park ’em in garages or on ramps. Neal’s getting pretty antsy. He must have a customer breathing down his neck. He says if we can deliver this thing tonight, and if it’s clean, he’ll sweeten the pot. Two thousand.”

“A thousand each?” I asked.

“Minus the three bills I promised Danny for the key. But this time you gotta drive it all the way across town. Neal wants us to park it at the Byerly’s in St. Louis Park.”

“Why there?”

“No cameras, and it’s easy for him to watch, you know, to make sure the cops don’t stake it out like they did the other one. He’s a little spooked these days. Also, Byerly’s is open twenty-four seven, so nobody’s going to notice another car sitting there overnight. That’s the plan, anyways.”

The road swooped to the left and down a long hill that ran along the St. Croix into Stillwater, an old river town full of touristy shops and restaurants. It reminded me of Taylors Falls, only about five times as big, with a lot of people on the sidewalks.

La Bellevue was on Main Street in the middle of town. Deke made a U-turn and pulled up in front of it. There were two guys dressed in khaki shorts and powder-blue polo shirts standing next to the VALET PARKING sign. One of them walked around the truck to Deke’s side and leaned in the window.

“Sorry, dude, we don’t park crappy old pickups.”

Deke laughed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of twenties.

The valet let the key drop onto Deke’s lap. It was just like the key I’d used for the other Mercedes.

“Oops,” he said, then reached for the money.

Deke held the money out of reach. “You got an address for me, Danny?”

“Oh yeah.” Danny handed him a folded sheet of paper.

Deke passed him the roll of bills.

“Gracias, amigo,” said Danny, who looked about as Mexican as lutefisk.

Deke handed me the key and the sheet of paper, then put the truck in gear.

“Hey!” Danny was back at the window. “There’s only two hundred here!”

“You’ll get it,” Deke said. He popped the clutch and we were off. I heard Danny yell something not nice after us.

“He’s not happy,” I said.

Deke shrugged. “I’m a little short. I’ll get the rest of his money to him, plus another fifty, once we get the car. He’ll be ecstatic.”

That’s another example of how Deke talked—one minute he says ain’t, then a few seconds later he uses a word like ecstatic.

The sheet of paper the valet had given us was a receipt from the Mercedes dealer. It listed the owner’s name—John R. Anderson—his address, the car’s VIN, and the sticker price: $89,770.00.

“Read me the address,” Deke said.

I read him the address. It was in Oakdale.

“What’s the plan?” I asked.

“Recon,” he said.

John R. Anderson lived in a “gated” development called Forest Glen, only the gate wasn’t real—it was permanently open. Anybody could drive in and out. The phony gate was just to let the residents know how special they were. Inside, Forest Glen was a tangle of curved intersecting streets lined with enormous houses on tiny landscaped lots—the sort of neighborhood where nobody leaves their car parked outside. Two teenagers in a scruffy pickup truck would be quickly noticed.

“This sucks,” Deke said as we drove past John Anderson’s house. “We’re gonna have to park outside the gate tomorrow morning and wait for him to drive out, then follow him to work. Assuming he goes to work. And we can kiss that bonus goodbye. Neal is gonna be pissed.”

“I have Pilates in the morning.”

Deke smacked the steering wheel with his palm.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No it’s not. I hate this shit. I mean, I make more money per hour at Wing’s Wok.”

“Then why steal cars?”

He looked at me, and we both started laughing—and even as we were laughing, I was thinking that we were laughing for completely different reasons, but it didn’t matter, because in that moment, we were both on the same side.

As we pulled out of Forest Glen, an idea hit me. I checked John Anderson’s receipt and there it was—his phone number. Two of them, actually—a home number and a work number.

I took out my cell and dialed.

A woman answered.

“May I speak with John?” I said.

“I’m sorry, but he’s not at home,” the woman said. “May I take a message?”

“Do you know when he’ll be home?”

“I’m not sure. He said he’d be working late.”

I realized then that I hadn’t blocked my number, and my name would be on her caller ID. I had to say something that wouldn’t make her suspicious later.

I said, “He has a job? I thought he was still in school!”

The woman said, “Are you sure you’re calling the right John Anderson?”

“Johnny Anderson? Goes to Kennedy High?”

The woman laughed. “Sorry, you have the wrong number.” She hung up.

I dialed the other number on the receipt. It rang five times, then was picked up by an answering system.

“You have reached the voicemail of…John Anderson. To leave a message, press one now. To speak to an operator, press two.”

I pressed two. A few seconds later a brisk, chirpy voice said, “CronoMed Industries!”

“Hi, could you give me your mailing address, please?”

The woman rattled off an address.

It was that time around sunset when it’s not really dark but most of the drivers have their headlights on, and the low sun bounces off windows and chrome, and everybody’s in a hurry—or at least it seems that way. Deke weaved in and out of the I-694 traffic in a confident way that made me want to get behind the wheel.

CronoMed Industries turned out to be a complex of three new-looking buildings just north of the loop in Fridley—one of those places you drive past and idly wonder what they do there and then forget all about it until the next time you drive by. The parking lot was huge, but at that time of day, there were only a couple dozen cars still there. Deke spotted the S550 almost immediately, parked way at the back of the lot. It was white but otherwise identical to the one we’d grabbed from Ridgedale.

“Looks like he doesn’t want anybody parking right next to him and dinging his paint when they open their door,” Deke said.

He parked a few rows away, close enough that we could read the license plate.

“Check the numbers,” he said.

I looked at the license number on the receipt. “That’s it,” I said.

“Okay then.” He was looking around.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking for security cameras. I don’t see any. Shit. Here comes somebody.”

A man was walking from the building entrance toward us. I thought he was going for the S550, but he stopped at an SUV, got in, and drove away.

“This is bad,” Deke said. “It’s better when the parking lot is full of cars. The way it is now, anybody coming out of the building will see us.”

A feeling of extreme anxiety had grabbed hold of me. As if something was supposed to happen but it wasn’t happening. The way you feel when you light a firecracker and throw it and the fuse burns down but it doesn’t go off, but you know it might and the longer you wait the less likely it is to happen. But it still might. Or like when you call somebody and leave a message and expect them to call you back, but they don’t.

“Maybe we should wait till tomorrow,” Deke said. “We probably lose the bonus, but it’ll be safer.”

I wasn’t thinking about the money. I was thinking about the sudden whoof to the gut that happens when you get into a Mercedes and close the door and the air pressure increases slightly and you are wrapped in sudden silence. I could see in my head, visualizing like in Pilates, the button that starts the car. I could almost feel its smooth surface under my thumb and that slight resistance just before it clicks and the engine thrums to life.

“You okay?” Deke asked.

I shouldered open the passenger door.

“Wait!” he said.

I didn’t.

“Kelleigh, don’t!”

There is this feeling I get sometimes. It’s like my head expands and everything gets sharp and hard and close—but not in a bad way. It’s a good feeling, a safe and purposeful feeling, a feeling of being firmly connected to reality. I usually get it only late at night in bed—the ceiling of my room looks like it’s only inches from my eyes, and even in the dark I can see it in microscopic detail and I’m sure that if I lift my hand, I can press my palm flat against it, but I never try because if it isn’t true I don’t want to know. There is a sound too. A sound without sound, a silent sound, felt more than heard, a buzzing or humming, rising and falling, like the sound a fetus hears before it has ears, or the sound you hear when someone miles away quietly says your name over and over again and you know you’ve heard something, but really you haven’t.

I had that feeling then as I walked across the parking lot toward the Mercedes. My heels hit the tarmac with perfect trip-hammer regularity, dragging Deke’s voice behind me like an elastic tether. I tugged on the door, but it didn’t open. Deke was still talking, but I wasn’t listening. I tried pressing one of the buttons on the key and heard a click. This time it opened. I quickly got in and closed the door, snapping off the rubbery banner of sound that was Deke’s voice. I was embraced by a cocoon of silence.

Except for the roar of my breathing and my heart in my ears.

The car smelled different—a man’s cologne plus leather seats plus the sour reek of cigars. Anyone who could own such an expensive car and then stink it up like that deserved to have it stolen.

I reached for the start button—but it wasn’t there. Instead, there was a thing like a fat key slot. I sat there staring at it for what seemed like forever. Then I remembered that when we’d stolen the first Mercedes, Deke had told me that the keyless thing was an option, which would explain why the door hadn’t opened for me.

There was a nub sticking out of the end of the key. I shoved it into the slot and heard it click home.

The sound of Deke’s car horn pierced my cocoon. I looked toward his truck. He was waving and pointing from behind the windshield. I looked where he was pointing. A man wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase was walking quickly toward me from the building entrance. The second I saw the guy coming, three things happened: The guy in the suit broke into a run, coming right at me. Deke took off in his pickup, his tires smoking. Suddenly the Mercedes’ lights started flashing on and off and the car started going whoop-whoop-whoop!

Funny thing. Even with everything happening at once, deep inside I was dead calm. I figured out right away that the guy had hit the panic button on his own key, and I remember thinking, I can get out of this car right now and walk away and probably nothing will happen. I will tell the man I noticed the car door was standing open and I got in just to see what it was like to sit in a Mercedes-Benz and he might believe me or he might not but either way he’ll just let me go because otherwise it will be a hassle and it wouldn’t be like I actually did anything wrong except just sit in his car for a few seconds.

But if I do that, I’ll be stuck here with no way to get home.

I twisted the key. The siren stopped whooping. I put the car in gear and stomped on the gas pedal. The car leapt forward. I cranked the wheel to the right, trying to get around the guy, but he dived onto the hood and swung his briefcase against the windshield. It hit so hard I could feel the shock right through the steering wheel, but the glass didn’t break. I twisted the wheel left, then right again, the whole time with the accelerator on the floor. He had the fingers of one hand locked on the edge of the hood by the windshield. With the other hand he swung the briefcase again; I ducked and flinched, but the glass held.

Don’t ever let anybody tell you that Mercedes-Benz doesn’t make quality windshields.

I had the wheel cranked all the way to the left, and my foot on the floor. The car was screeching around in a donut and the guy was looking right at me through the windshield, our eyes locked, then he went flying off, practically tearing off one of the windshield wipers, and I felt a thump from the back end, as if the wheels had bumped over a log. I straightened the wheel and headed for the exit, the wiper blade sticking out like a crooked antenna. Don’t look! I said to myself, but I couldn’t help it. I stopped and looked back. The man was getting up. He started toward me again, limping. His briefcase was crushed and the contents were scattered across the parking lot.

I drove off and did not look back again.

Later, trying to sort out what had happened, I remembered things in little bits and pieces. Like the way I’d felt when I realized I’d hit something and I was thinking it was him, not his briefcase. Either way, what I felt then—not knowing what had really happened—was not the horror of having caused injury to another human being but anger and frustration that he had gotten in my way, that he had tried to interfere.

I was also pissed at Deke for taking off.

Many car thieves are into speed and meth because they like the way it gets them all revved up inside, and they steal cars so they can buy drugs because just stealing cars isn’t enough of a buzz for some people.

I did not drive directly to the Byerly’s parking lot. Instead, I called Will. The second he answered, I said, “Meet me outside. At the curb. Fifteen minutes.”

I didn’t give him time to say no.