Excerpt from Ann Patchett's novel 'Commonwealth'

In the parking lot, Cal tried all the doors to the locked station wagon. Franny asked him what he needed out of the car and he said, "Something. Mind your own business." He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in the window, trying to see whatever it was he wanted.

"I can break in," Caroline said. "If it's something you really need." "Liar," Cal said, not bothering to look at her.

"I can," she said and then she pointed at Jeanette. "Go get me a coat hanger out of the closet."

It was true. Their father had shown them how that very summer. Their uncle Joe Mike had locked his keys in Aunt Bonnie's car when they were all at their grandparents' house that last weekend, and their father had unlocked the door with a coat hanger to save Joe Mike the twelve dollars it would have cost to call a locksmith. After that Fix had both girls practice because they were interested. He said it was a good thing to know.

"The mistake people make is that they think they're supposed to pull up on something and you're not, you push down," he'd told them.

Caroline set about untwisting the wire hanger. That was the hardest part.

"You're wasting time," Cal said.

"Whose time?" Holly said. "If you're in such a hurry then go." She was curious, and it was plain to all of them that Cal was curious, too.

Albie walked in wide circles around the car, swinging his hips from side to side and doing the boom-boom thing.

"Pipe down," Cal said to him. "If you wake Dad up he'll take your head off." That was when the rest of them remembered whose room the car was parked in front of and made a point to be quiet.

Caroline picked back the rubber seal at the bottom of the window with her pointer finger and stuck the coat hanger in while the other children pressed close to watch. Caroline was a little worried that locks might be different from one car to another. The station wagon was an Oldsmobile and Aunt Bonnie's car was something else, a Dodge maybe. The tip of her tongue pushed up at the corner of her mouth while she guided the coat hanger blindly towards what her father called the sweet spot about ten inches down from the button lock. Then she felt it, the wire against the mechanism of the lock. She didn't try to hook it, though the temptation was there. It was just a little bump and she pushed straight down the way she'd been taught.

The lock popped up.

It was a victory for all the girls that they remembered not to scream. Caroline pulled the coat hanger out and opened the door like it was some sort of natural act. Even Albie put his arms around her waist. "You broke the car!" he said, his loud whisper making him sound like a movie gangster.

"That's right," she said and gave him the hanger as the morning's souvenir. Albie immediately went to the car next to theirs and began jamming the hanger down against the window. Oh, what Caroline wouldn't have given to call her father from the motel phone! She wanted him to know what a good job she'd done.

Cal took the coat hanger from his brother and studied it in light of this new potential. "You can teach me how to do this?" he said, either to Caroline or the coat hanger.

"Only police officers are allowed to do it," Franny said. "And their children. Otherwise you're a criminal."

"I'd be a criminal," Cal said. He slid into the front seat of the station wagon, opened the glove compartment. He took out a gun and a fifth of gin, the seal still on.

Copyright ©2016 by Ann Patchett. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers