Maybe I never realized how much being a Stafford is an all-consuming thing, especially here in our native territory. The collective identity is so overwhelming, there’s no room for an individual one.
Once upon a time, I liked that…didn’t I? I enjoyed the perks that came with it. Every path I stepped on was instantly smoothed down before me.
But now I’ve had a taste of climbing my own mountains my own way.
Have I grown beyond this life?
The idea splits me down the middle, leaving half of my identity on each side of the divide. Am I my father’s daughter, or am I just me? Do I have to sacrifice one to be the other?
Surely this is only a…a reaction to all of the stress lately.
Pausing at a stop sign, I look down Grandma Judy’s street, past the dip in the road where we kids splashed in puddles when it rained, past the neatly trimmed hedge and the mailbox with the iron horse head atop.
There’s a taxi sitting in my grandmother’s driveway. In a town the size of Aiken, it’s not a typical sight.
I hesitate at the intersection and watch the cab a moment. It doesn’t back away and leave. Maybe the driver is unaware that nobody lives there anymore? He must be waiting in front of the wrong house.
Turning down her street, I fully expect him to be leaving when I pull in, but he’s not. In fact, he seems to be…dozing in the driver’s seat? He doesn’t move when I drive past him and get out of my car.
He looks young, almost like a teenager, but he must be old enough to have a commercial driver’s license. There’s no passenger in the backseat and no one around the house as far as I can see. I’d suspect that this was related to some sort of hideous news exposé, a reporter skulking around snapping photos to show how the other half lives, but why would someone like that travel by cab?
The driver jumps about a foot when I knock on the half-open window. His mouth hangs open as he tries to blink me into focus.
“Ummph…guess I fell asleep,” he apologizes. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“I think you’re in the wrong place,” I tell him.
He glances around, stifles a yawn, flutters his thick, dark lashes against the bright late-morning sunlight. “No…no, ma’am. The reservation’s for ten-thirty.”
I check my watch. “You’ve been here for almost a half hour…sitting in the driveway?” Who would’ve directed a cab to my grandmother’s house? “You must have the wrong address.” Some poor customer is probably pacing the floors about now.
The driver doesn’t seem worried in the least. Straightening in his seat, he glances at the console. “No, ma’am. It’s a standing reservation. Every Thursday at ten-thirty. Prepaid, so my dad…I mean my boss says come here and sit, since it’s already paid for.”
“Every Thursday?” I cycle through the schedule—what I can remember of it—from the time when Grandma Judy was still living here with a full-time caretaker. The day she ended up lost and confused at a shopping mall, she was in a cab. “How long have you been doing this—coming here every Thursday?”
“Ummm…maybe I should…call the office, so you can talk…”
“No. It’s okay.” I’m afraid the office won’t answer my questions. The kid behind the wheel doesn’t seem to know any better. “When you picked my grandmother up on Thursdays, where did you take her?”
“Over by Augusta, a place on the water there. I only drove her a few times, but my dad and my grandpa did for…maybe a couple years. We’re a family company. Four generations.” The last part sounds sweetly as if he plucked it straight from the billboard.
“Years?” I’m so confused, the word doesn’t even begin to describe me right now. There was nothing in my grandmother’s daybooks about a standing Thursday appointment. She had no standing appointments, other than bridge circles and beauty shop visits. And Augusta? That’s thirty minutes or so each way. Who in the world would she have been visiting regularly in the Augusta area? And in a cab? And for years?
“And she went to the same place every time?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am. As far as I know.” He looks extremely uncomfortable now. On the one hand, he realizes I’m grilling him. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to lose what has obviously been a long-standing fare. I can’t imagine what the price for the trip to Augusta might be.
My hand settles over the top of his window. It might be silly, but I want to make sure he doesn’t try to flee the scene while I sort out the barrage of information. A place on the water there…
Something completely unexpected pops into my mind. “A place on the water. You mean on the river?” The Savannah River runs through Augusta. When Trent and I talked to May, she mentioned Augusta. Something about going home and drifting down the Savannah River.
“Well, yeah, the place could be on the river. The gate’s all…kinda overgrown like? I just drop her off there and wait. I don’t know what happens after she goes in.”
“How long did she usually stay?”
“A few hours. Pop used to walk down to the bridge and fish while he waited. She didn’t care. She’d come out and honk on the cab horn when she was ready to go.”
I just stand there gaping at him. I can’t even begin to reconcile all of this with the grandmother I knew. The grandmother I thought I knew.
Was she writing May Crandall’s story after all? Or is there more?
“Can you take me there?” I blurt out.
The cabby shrugs. He moves to exit the car so he can open the back door for me. “Sure. Yeah. The fare’s paid for.”
My pulse inches upward. Goosebumps dot my arms. If I get in this car, where will I end up?
My phone buzzes, reminding me that I was headed someplace before this detour. It’s a text from Trent telling me he and Jonah are holding down a table for us. The hamburger stand is already crowded this morning.
Instead of texting back, I slip away from the cabby and call Trent. I apologize for not being there and ask, “Can you…could you…come with me to do something?” The explanation of where I am and what’s happening sounds even more bizarre when I voice it out loud.
Fortunately, Trent doesn’t decide that I’ve lost it. Actually, he’s intrigued. We make plans for the cab to swing by the restaurant so Trent and Jonah can follow in their car.
“Meantime, I’ll grab a burger to go for you,” Trent offers. “World-famous shakes here. Jonah’s giving it the thumbs-up already. Want one?”
“Thanks. That sounds good.” But I’m not sure I could eat a thing at the moment.
On the short ride to the restaurant, I can hardly stay focused, I’m so on edge. Trent is waiting in the parking lot with Jonah already buckled in. He hands me a sack and a shake and tells me he’ll be right behind me.
“You okay?” he asks. Our gazes catch for a moment, and I’m lost in the deep blue of his eyes. I find myself relaxing into them, thinking, Trent’s here. It’ll be all right.
The thought almost lifts the mass of dread that’s growing inside me. Almost.
Unfortunately, I understand the feeling well enough to know I shouldn’t ignore it. It’s the sixth sense that always comes alive when I’m about to learn something practically unthinkable about the players in a case I’m working on—the trusted neighbor was responsible for the child’s disappearance; the innocent-looking eighth grader was stocking up on pipe bombs; the clean-cut father of four had a computer full of disgusting pictures. That sense is preparing me for something; I just don’t know what.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just afraid of where this cab is going to end up…and what we might find.”