“That’s me,” I tell him, pointing to a younger version of myself in a hospital gown, holding baby Gabby.
“I see that. You’re so happy.”
“Yeah, despite being ditched in the hospital with a newborn, I was.”
He gives my hand another squeeze. “Who would do that? Don’t answer. An idiot.”
“You’re right.” I give him that, and he sets the frame down.
“Let’s roll. Glad you wore jeans. If not, I was going to have to ask you to change.”
When we get outside the door, I ask, “Where are we going? Dare I ask, now that I know I need jeans?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Hayride?” I ask as we make our way down the stairs.
“No cigar. No more guessing.” He opens the door to the Jeep and waits until I’m settled inside..
“Not FunZone, right?” I have to ask when he slips into the driver’s seat.
“Definitely not. I like their pizza, but it kind of gives me gas.”
“Oh my God.” I slink lower in my seat. “You’re never going to let me live that down, and I didn’t even say it.”
“Sit back and enjoy the ride,” he says while turning on some Ed Sheeran.
I do what he asks, because when else do I get to sit back and enjoy the ride?
As we wind our way to the parkway (that’s Pittsburghese for freeway), we make small talk. Reid’s students have finals over the course of the following week, then he’s on winter break. He mentions not having any plans for Christmas.
“Maybe I’ll go skiing for a day or two. Do you have big plans?” he asks, eyeing me.
“My sister and her kids are going to come for Christmas Eve and then go back to Ohio to be with her neighbors on Christmas Day. They do this big buffet every year. I usually make breakfast, and Gabby opens her presents from Santa on Christmas Day, then we go to the movies. That’s what Jewish people do, by the way, and since I’m half, I try to uphold.”
“Do you have Chinese too?”
I laugh out loud. “So you’re familiar with the tradition?”
“I don’t live under a rock, Andonia.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
We exit the parkway and turn onto a steep, winding hill. That’s Pittsburgh roads for you; nothing is on a grid.
“Does Leona join you?”
“No, she goes to her son and daughter-in-law’s for the holiday. They live in New Jersey. They also don’t have any kids, only cats, so she doesn’t feel obligated to stay for long. She goes, they eat ham and all the trimmings, and she usually comes back on the twenty-sixth, covered in cat hair.”
“Not a cat person?”
“Eh, I don’t have a preference either way. Although too much of anything isn’t a good thing.”
“I tend to agree,” he says as he maneuvers his Jeep into a parallel-parking spot at the end of a dead-end street and kills the engine.
For reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I don’t move to get out. But I’m a single mom, so I have a sixth sense. Wary, I survey my surroundings. No restaurants, coffee shops, or movie theaters in sight, forget a comedy club. The streetlight illuminates an old warehouse, a large steel door in the middle of the facade.
“Are you going to murder me?” I ask. “Because there’s nothing around here.”
