Years later she would remember the exact page she was on when she was interrupted. She never knew if it was because the book was particularly good, which it was, or because that was the moment she might call the beginning.

She would never finish the book, that page a third of the way in being the last she would read of it. For years she waited for the perfect time to pick it back up, but she never would. The book carried such meaning, the words were too beautiful. This was not the stuff of an idle Sunday.

A special enough time never came, and so the words on page 128 marked an end, and a beginning.

The first cut of hay was high in the south field where she read against a tree. It swayed and obscured, that’s how it snuck up on her. Nosing through the green gold grass, flashes of silver made her blink and look up four or five times before she finally saw it, and by then it was only a few meters away.

Without a face, it seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see it, but that was impossible. It reversed back a few feet and made to turn, animal cautious. Old halogen lights flickered on and off in quick succession, blinking, as it crept carefully towards her, ready to peel away at any hint of threat.

More confused than anything she shut her book, regarding the thing with the sideways concern of the frequently teased.

“Father John?” She asked, long neck craning to take in the silver chassis, smooth and streamline as a river trout, flanks splashed with the sienna of the field and whipped green by tall grass, nearly camouflage.

The car crept backwards in an exact match of her peering forwards. Open-topped, the empty driver's seat was protected by a mere half moon of plate glass, she could see the steering wheel quivering with a ghost of anxiety.

“If she figures out you’re operating one of her old cars…” she warned, increasingly certain as to who was playing games with her.

And with that the wheel snapped right, then left, taking the two-seater around to shoot twin sprays of dark earth across Murphy and the tree where she read.

Some of it got into her eyes. She swore, which she almost never did and by the time she had blinked away the last of the grit, the car was gone.