When I was twenty, Uncle Ray retired. He sold me the garage for one dollar.

“Just promise me you'll never lie to a customer,” he said.

I promised.

I did something nobody else in town did. I put a big sign in the window.

We'll tell you exactly what's wrong. We'll show you the old part. We'll never charge for something you don't need. If we don't fix it right, we fix it free.

People came from all over. Single moms who'd been cheated by other garages. Old men who didn't understand cars. College kids with their first car and no money. Word spread.

I opened a second garage when I was twenty-two. A fourth at twenty-four. Then the reviews went crazy online, and everything got faster.

By the time I was twenty-eight, Sullivan Auto had twenty-two garages across Kansas and Missouri. Two hundred and sixty mechanics. Our bright green trucks were everywhere.

I still drove my old red pickup, a 1985 Ford I'd rebuilt myself. I still worked a shift under a car every Friday at the first garage on Metcalf Avenue. And I still had black around my fingernails.

I'd never told anyone from Oak Ridge High what I did.

Nobody had ever asked.