But no one steals it, and Callie doesn’t go into car-jack mode. She’s still there, sleeping deeply, as I get back in. I plug the car charger into my lighter slot and the lightning end into her phone. Then I start driving to nowhere, waiting for it to gain enough power to turn on.
I’ve driven a few miles when the phone starts up. I pull over into a Jiffy Lube parking lot. There’s no passcode on her phone, so I thumb through to her contacts list. On the search bar, I punch in the name Sydney. Up comes the name Sydney Batson, with a phone number.
Finally! I click the little phone icon next to the number and listen as Sydney’s phone rings. I’ll tell her to get to her grandmother’s house and open the door immediately or I’ll dump Grandma on the curb. I would never do that, of course, but she won’t know that.
But the phone rings through to voice mail. I want to scream. I leave a message that I have her grandmother and need for her to call me. I realize as I hang up that it sounds like a ransom call. But maybe it’ll light a fire.
I go back to her contacts and find her address. Maybe the girl works at home. I turn the car around and head that way. Callie is still sleeping when I get to the little patio home with a double garage and a tiny courtyard out front, home to wilted flowers that desperately need water. Of course. She takes care of her plants like she takes care of her grandmother.
Well, I’ll just sit here with the car and meter running all day if I have to, until the notorious Sydney gets home.
Minutes crawl by. I’m tapping my heel and shaking my knee, and finally I slam my fist on the steering wheel. I can’t do this. I can’t just sit in someone’s driveway for hours.
I call her back and leave another message. “This is Finn Parrish. I’m a cab driver your grandmother hired, and I can’t take her home because she locked herself out and can’t find the key. I don’t know what to do with her. I got your address from her phone and I’m sitting in your driveway, and my meter is still running. I have to make a living. Call me back.” I give the number again in case she’s too dense to look at her caller ID.
I’ll mention dropping Callie off at the curb in my next message if she doesn’t call me back. I glance in the rearview mirror and see that Callie’s head has dropped to that painful angle again. I get out and prop her better, then get back in front.
Another whole day pretty much wasted, and she doesn’t even have cash to pay me again. She could write me another check, but for all I know it won’t clear the bank. I haven’t had a chance to try to cash the one from yesterday.
Maybe God is punishing me. Maybe this is some cosmic what-goes-around-comes-around sting. I probably deserve it after the way I treated my mother. He’s been waiting for the right moment, and this is apparently it.
Now God’s stuck me with an elderly woman who’s sick. And there really isn’t anything I can do about it.
I look back at Callie again. Does she look cold? I turn up the heater, then shrug off my jacket and put it over her.
Whether from cold or not, there’s a pallor to her skin as she sleeps that saddens me beyond words. Callie doesn’t look well at all. What if she dies right here? What will I do then?
As irritating as she is, she’s a sweet woman. She doesn’t deserve to die in a cab in her granddaughter’s driveway. Anger shoots through me. I add Sydney’s number to my phone, then get out and call her again while I pace up and down the drive-way, and this time I light into her voice mail. “I just want to know what kind of person refuses to call back when I’ve told you that your sick, confused, Methuselah-contemporary grandmother is sitting in my cab, locked out of her house. This isn’t good for her. She needs to be at home, not running all over town, and now she’s so deeply asleep that I’m afraid she might not wake up. So why don’t you call me back before I put her out on the curb or drop her off at the police station? Or—here’s a thought—go unlock her door so she can go home!”
I almost throw the phone after cutting it off, but instead I kick my tire. I get back into the car, wondering why I chose this profession when my other one failed. I’ve gone from the scent of coq au vin to gas fumes and body odor.
But truth be told, cab driving has been less of an emotional and physical drain. My restaurant clientele let me down—when the economy tanked, they quit coming. But it didn’t really matter. By the time I had to sell the restaurant, I was burned out anyway. I was ready to go.
But there were a million other things I could have done. Why did it have to be this? Why do I have to be stranded here with her?
When Callie’s phone rings, I jump. I swipe it on. “Hello?”
“Uh . . . hi, this is Sydney Batson.” Her voice is clipped, a little angry. “I didn’t get your messages until just now because I’ve been trying a case in court.”
A lawyer. I hate lawyers. But yeah, that’s a good excuse.
“Let me speak to my grandmother.”
“Can’t, she’s asleep in my car. So are you going to come get her, or unlock her house? This is tying up my whole day.”
“You said you had the meter running. You’ll get paid.”
“It’s not about that. She’s not well. She needs to be home.”
A car pulls into the driveway behind me as I’m talking, and behind the wheel is a woman with a phone to her ear. Is this Sydney?
She waves. “Yes, it’s me,” she says. ‘“Bye.”
I get out of the car and wait with my hands on my hips.
Sydney is cuter than I expected. She’s not tall like a model, as Callie implied. She’s a petite blonde with big brown eyes. She heads toward me. “I didn’t know she was going to call you. I got her dressed this morning and made sure she had food. I don’t even know how she had your number.”
“I gave her a card yesterday after I took her to the doctor. And that’s another thing. Why would you send her to the doctor with a cab driver? She didn’t hear her name yesterday when they called it. I finally had to force them to take her back.”
She opens the back door of the cab and leans in. When she sees how deeply her grandmother is sleeping, she gets back out. “She’s sleeping so soundly. I hate to wake her.”
“I know the feeling,” I say. “So . . . what? You’re just going to leave her there?”
“No, of course not.” She glances back at Callie. “You’ve taken care of her. I appreciate it.” She closes the door quietly, trying not to disturb Callie. “Look, I’m a first-year associate at my law firm, and yesterday they fired a bunch of us. I’m still there, but it’s the worst possible time for me to miss work. I started a case in court today, and as you probably know, you can’t just ask the judge for a personal day. Besides, my job is hanging by a thread if I don’t win this case . . .”
I roll my eyes. “A key? Do you have a key?”
“I’m just saying that I couldn’t take her to the doctor yesterday because of an important staff meeting, but she was sick and I wanted her to go. How has she been today?”
“I’m not her nurse,” I say. “Do you have the key or not?”
“She keeps an extra one under her mat.”
My mouth drops open. “Are you kidding me?”
“No. Did you check there?”
“No! I didn’t think anyone was stupid enough to leave a key under their mat. That’s the first place anybody would look.”
“Clearly not you!”
“You’re blaming me? You need to take better care of her!”
Tears spring to Sydney’s eyes, but she makes a valiant effort to hold them back. “I get up at five a.m. every day to get over there because that’s when she tries to get up. I get her bathed and dressed, feed her, and make sure she’s okay until I can check on her at lunch. Then I come home and feed her again and get her into bed. It’s not easy!”
I feel bad now. Maybe she isn’t a no-account. I lower my voice. “Maybe you need to hire somebody to stay with her.”
“I can’t afford it, and neither can she. Until recently she was fine in her own home, but she
has just gotten worse and worse . . .” She dabs at her eyes. “Wait. You said she called you today. Did she seem more coherent?”
“A little. She had me running all over the place doing errands. The dry cleaners, the bank. She even went shopping.”
“For what? I do all her grocery shopping.”
“For Christmas.”
Her eyes brighten. “Really? She remembered that it’s almost Christmas? That’s a good sign, right? The medicine must have already helped her.”
“I guess. How old is she, anyway?”
“Eighty.”
“Only eighty? I would have thought . . .” My voice thins out.
“She’s been so out of it for the last few days. I’m so relieved that she’s doing better. I was thinking maybe she had a brain tumor or Alzheimer’s . . . but it wouldn’t come on that suddenly, would it? If only the doctor would call me back with the results of her tests.”
I can’t believe I’m still standing here with her. “Okay, well, I can take her home if you want. Or you could take her.”
“Look, I know the whole key-under-the-mat thing is disturbing, but I obviously can’t control her, and I knew if she ever got locked out, it would be the first and probably only place she would look for it.”
“Uh-huh. Well, she didn’t.”
“She’s a strong-willed woman, and having this . . . dementia, or whatever it is . . . it’s only making her more strong-willed.”
“Ya think?”
She breathes out a huff and shakes her head. “You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
It’s true, I don’t. I get back into the cab and grab my phone. I navigate to the Notes section and find the amounts I’ve logged. “She owes me seventy-seven dollars for today.”
She swallows. “Okay. Let me get my purse.”
I feel a little sorry for her as she goes back to her car. It sounds like she’s strapped and stressed. I know what that feels like.
By the time she returns, I’ve made up my mind. “Look, don’t worry about it. I have a check she wrote me this morning for yesterday. Does she even have enough in her account for that? Just forget it. You don’t have to pay.”
“No, I insist. You have to make a living.” She opens her wallet and pulls out a twenty. “This is all I have right now.”
“I take debit cards, but—”
“Okay, the truth is, I only have forty-two dollars in my account. I’m supposed to get paid tomorrow. Can you wait?”
“Sure, don’t worry about it.”
“Can you help me get her into my car?”
“Of course.” I’m elated to get her off my hands.
I get her chair out of the trunk as Sydney crawls in to wake her grandmother up. “Grammy?”
I wheel the chair to the door, and Sydney hands me back my jacket. “Yours?”
“Yeah. She looked cold.”
She smiles up at me, like she sees something that I don’t want her to see. “Thank you.”
I look away as I shrug it back on.
She shakes her grandmother again and, louder, says, “Grammy, wake up!”
Callie stirs and opens her eyes. “Hello, pretty girl. I must have dozed off.”
I watch as Sydney gently gets her out of the car and into the wheelchair, then I help get her into the front seat of Sydney’s car.
When I’ve collapsed the chair again and put it into the back, Sydney rolls her window down. “Thank you for taking care of her.”
“Sure, no problem.”
I go to my car and watch as the girl backs her car out. Relief floods over me like a drug as I head to the airport to make some actual cash.
CHAPTER 13
Finn
My phone chimes at seven thirty the next morning, waking me out of a REM cycle. I grope for my phone and squint at the readout. LuAnn is the last person I want to talk to. But in the interest of job security, I click the phone on. “It’s my day off,” I say.
“I know. I hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Of course you woke me up. If you’d looked at the logs you’d know that I worked until midnight last night trying to make up for the money I lost driving that lady around all day.”
“That’s why I’m calling. She called this morning and asked me to get in touch with you again.”
“No!” I yell. “No way. Tell her I’m not coming.”
“She said she owes you money and wants to pay you.”
I sit up in bed, rubbing my eyes. “She said that? Did she sound lucid?”
“Yes, she seemed very nice. She called you ‘that sweet boy.’ I knew right away who she meant.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, I can call her back and tell her you’d rather not.”
“No, that’s okay. I need the money.”
“I thought so.”
“All right, I’ll go by there.”
I hang up and try to go back to sleep, but it doesn’t happen. Finally, I surrender to the day.
An hour later, Callie is back in my car. How does this keep happening? I told her that I was off today, that I’d just come to pick up the money. She gave me a hundred dollars cash—which I suppose Sydney got for her—but before I know it, she’s grabbing her purse and declaring that she feels so much better that she hopes to get a lot done today.
She won’t take no for an answer. Strong-willed doesn’t even begin to cover it. I can’t be mean to her—though I wish I could—so I dutifully get her into my back seat.
I radio in to LuAnn and tell her I’m on the clock.
“I thought you were off. You were up till midnight making up for—”
“You’re not funny, Lu. I gotta go.”
“Well, at least you’ll be able to pay your rent.”
“‘Bye.” I hang up and look at Callie in the rearview mirror. She looks brighter today, more awake, and she sounds lucid except for her selective hearing about my day off. “Miss Callie, do you have your key to get back in?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Are you sure? Because yesterday you forgot it.”
She chuckles in a coy way. “I hate to admit it, but my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“No kidding. Hey, have you ever thought of hiring a driver to just drive you around, Miss Callie? Someone who looks after just you?”
She gives me a beautiful smile. “Well, I did that, didn’t I?”
“Not me. No, ma’am, I’m a cab driver. I don’t work just for you.”
“Well, I don’t need you all the time.”
“Still . . . it’s expensive to hire me for a whole day. If you had someone just for you, maybe someone who could also do other things for you, it might be cheaper.”
“Oh, I’m just fine.”
She can’t be reasoned with. I give in to the Stockholm syndrome beginning to take hold. “So where do you want to go today?”
She pulls out her list and refers to it. “The mechanic’s first.”
“Mechanic? You don’t have a car.”
She laughs then, and I have to admit that her joy is contagious. “No, I just need to talk to the owner. He’s a nice young man, and he’s not married.”
“Not more men.”
Callie’s smile fades. “I just don’t want her to be alone for Christmas.”
I know she’s talking about Sydney. “Well, can’t she spend it with you?”
“Yes, but I’m not that exciting.” She offers a faint smile. “I want her to have a good Christmas. She’s been sad since her father died. I wasn’t that big a fan of his, you know. He never liked me. After my daughter died, he never brought Sydney to see me. It wasn’t until she grew up that I had any relationship with her at all.”
“How old was she when she lost her mother?”
“Eight.”
“And her mother was your daughter?”
“Yes.”
My heart jolts. What a sad thing. In a softer voice, I ask, “What happened to her?”
Her face transitions slowly int
o sorrow, as if she’s living through it again, and her eyes mist over. I wish I’d never brought it up.
“Cancer.”
“I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
“Sydney was such a precious child. I was close to her until then. After that, hardly anything.” Her sorrow gives way to a joyful smile. “But God is good. I prayed for her every day, and look what he did with her! And eventually he got us back together.”
“Yes, ma’am.” As I drive, I think of Sydney as an eight-year-old child, losing her mother and being kept from a doting grandmother. Even if her father was the greatest man on earth, which he couldn’t have been if he ejected Callie from his life and Sydney’s, the loss of those two women would leave a huge void in Sydney’s life.
I go through the motions again as she hits up the owner of the mechanic’s shop. She strikes out again.
Her upbeat mood is waning as I get her into the car again.
“Miss Callie, I know you’re trying to help Sydney, but why don’t you just enjoy Christmas Day with her and stop all this matchmaking?”
“I need to get her a grand present.”
“I think you did that yesterday. We went to Macy’s, remember?”
“No, I want to get her something she really wants. Not just some old grandmother gift.”
“Well, okay. Where do you want to go?”
“That orange place. Where they sell those computers and whatnot.”
“Orange place?” I try to think of someplace with an orange sign. “Best Buy?” I ask, even though it’s yellow.
“No, no. They have those pod things.”
“The Apple store?”
“Yes, that’s it. Take me there.”
I chuckle and turn toward the mall.
In the Apple showroom, Callie asks me, “Which one would she like?” Her question makes me feel inadequate. She’s looking at the iPads. I don’t have the cash for one of these puppies, so I have no idea what they cost. There are at least six variations.
“Honestly, you got me.”
“Well, which one would you want?”
“Just get her the one you like. I’m sure she’ll like whatever you pick.”
Callie laughs way too loud. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about these things. I just know they’re very popular.”
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