The company inside: he could take or leave. A lot of them, some of whom he would consider former buddies, wouldn’t take so kindly to him simply popping his head in after all this time. Others would shrug and return to their pool game, if they broke from conversation at all. The ones staring straight ahead at the bar couldn’t be stirred no matter what; a bomb might as well go off. The days the driver misses, however few in number, are irredeemably in the past. Nothing can be done now but cruise on by, maybe a quick glance and a blink at the stark green neon border of otherwise shaded windows.

Pat’s marks the intersection with Ternes Street, where the driver must turn off to reach the Warshansky’s on Clayton. He is immediately greeted with the familiar regiment of stocky, semi-detached houses, gradually disappearing down neat rows. Their yards are compact and trim. A tired glow of families sleeping or preparing for bed settles over all of them, over every street. The driver thinks of how perfect these facades are for the lives led behind them: expressive enough to emit the hint of tidy, domestic contentment, but sturdy enough to retain and conceal the turmoil brewing within. Maybe that’s what Henry Ford, grandfather of industrial Dearborn, had in mind when he had these houses built for his plants’ future workers. As long as the walls were sturdy enough to contain the strife at the center, old Mr. Ford could be assured a focused worker while Dearborn’s civic life benefits from its outwardly docile denizens.

Large stone pilings hem the wood frame of every house, and provide the solid corners for a front porch. Lit from beneath by yard lamps and streetlights, the effect is of so many squatting pitbulls in a line, paws jutting out to steady their rotund bodies. They lend the streets a regal air, though nowhere could be more mundane. The driver is comforted at once by the order and seeming ordinariness of this and every one of Dearborn’s residential streets; which is odd, because as he passes the glow from each serene façade, he comes that much closer to facing the Warshanky’s and the fate that awaits them all. It’s comforting to know that the end, whatever it may entail, could be just a few more blocks ahead and to the right. For the first time, the driver understands the peace that so many have described as descending upon the person facing death.