Shoot—his voice is getting louder. He’s coming back.
I hustle back to my desk. By the time John reappears, I’m frowning thoughtfully at an old receipt.
“Oh, thanks,” I say casually, as he returns the phone to the dock. He kind of grunts in acknowledgment and then disappearsinto the garage. I put down the receipt—which I’ve just noticed is from 2009, how the heck did this get here?—and prop my chin on my hand, frowning thoughtfully.
It never occurred to me to wonder if Fred runs this shop properly, because honestly, I’ve never really cared. But now that I think about it, there are a lot of things around here that need updating. The booking system is ancient, for one thing, and I know for a fact the security cameras in the back are broken, since Dave warned me not to park there when I first started working here. And I’m no mechanic (obviously), but I’ve heard Dave and John cursing out some machine called a tire balancer about a billion times. I wonder why Fred hasn’t bought them a new one.
Oh, well. I’m not going to get involved. Fred has always been nice to me, but he seems like someone who could fly into a temper pretty quickly, and I don’t want to get on his bad side. Plus, it’s not like I’m going to work here forever. In fact, with the new money coming in from helping Mrs. Finnamore, I might be able to get out of here even sooner. If I don’t change my lifestyle at all, I can use the caregiving money to pay down my student loan. This time next year, I could be debt-free and ready to dive into a new, exciting career!
This encouraging thought carries me through the morning, and I pass most of the time looking up things that happened in Canada in the fifties and sixties. I even track down a list of the top ten most popular songs in Canada in 1962, which is when Mrs. Finnamore was my exact age. Maybe I’ll make a playlist of them for the drive to the museum.
A few times during the morning, I find my thumb hovering overtheNew York Timesapp, but every time, I decide against opening it. It just makes more sense to do Wordle at lunchtime, when I can focus more. And if John happens to be doing it then too, well, so be it.
I head back to the break room just after noon. John is sitting at the table, unwrapping a ham-and-cheese sub.
“How’s it going?” I ask, opening the fridge door.
He shrugs.
That’s his answer to the question “How’s it going?” Ashrug.
I turn away and roll my eyes. Okay, maybe we’re never going to be BFFs, but I’ve still decided I’m going to make him my Wordle work buddy, whether he likes it or not. I’ve got to keep my streak going, and it can’t hurt to have someone to bounce ideas off of.
I put a pot of coffee on, spoon some granola and yogurt into a bowl, and sit down across from him. “Wordle time.”
He raises an eyebrow at my tone (which, okay, was kind of bossy) but takes out his phone.
“What’s your first word going to be?” I ask.
He shrugs again. “You?”
“HELPS,” I say. “As in, my neighbor’s daughter just hired me to—er,helpsher out around the house.”
“That sentence doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, I know,” I say tartly. “But ‘help’ is only four letters. What’s your first word?”
“COURT.”
“As in...?”
“As in nothing.” He types it into his phone. I look away beforehe clicks enter. I don’t want to accidentally cheat. “So are you, like, trained to do home care or something?” he asks.
“What? Oh—no. I’m not doing actual nursing stuff.” I spent a good hour last night making sure that I didn’t need any specific training to be a caregiver in Canada, but it seems like as long as I stick to strictly nonmedical things, I’m okay. “I’m just going to help my neighbor out with groceries and chores and things. She’s eighty-eight,” I add.
He grimaces. “Brutal.”
“No, it’s fun!” I insist. “I love older people. They have such interesting stories.”
He looks at me like I’m crazy. “Okay.”
“Don’t you ever ask your grandparents to tell you stories from when they grew up?”
“No.”
I frown. “Well, you’re missing out. Too many people think of their grandparents as just, like, generic old people who only exist to send them money at Christmas. They don’t think of them as real people with feelings and hopes and dreams.” John is still looking at me like I’m nuts, but I ignore him. “I bet your grandparents could tell you really interesting stories if you just asked them the right questions,” I chide him. “Like, wouldn’t your mother’s parents have been alive during the April Revolution? Or were they living in Canada then?”
John frowns. “How’d you know my mom’s Dominican?”
