“He was drunk driving,” Luke said grimly. “I’m not, by the way.”
“I know,” I told him. “I was the one serving you.” And I wouldn’t have gotten into the car, no way. I had been through that enough to know it was better to walk, no matter how far.
“What about you? What have you been up to all these years?”
I rubbed my hand on my jeans. “I went to school, worked, you know.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“U of M.”
“That’s where I went to law school,” he said, angling his body toward me.
“I know,” I said. I had seen him there. The University of Michigan had about 45,000 students, grad and undergrad, but if you looked hard and long enough you might see someone you knew.
“I wish I had known you were there,” he said, and I laughed a little.
“Why? I don’t think we would have hung out.” Only in my dreams did we hang out.
“Still, I’m sure it would have been nice for you to have someonea little familiar around. Not many people from here end up at Michigan. I could have treated you to dinner—I remember when people’s parents or older sister or something would come to Georgetown. We would all go out for a feast at some fancy place on their dime.” He laughed. “We were pigs.”
Nope, there hadn’t been a lot of that when I was in college.
“What did you study?” he asked me.
“Science,” I answered.
“What was your major?”
I hesitated. “My major was Cellular and Molecular Biology and Biomedical Engineering.”
The car slowed as his foot must have come off the gas pedal. “What? Really?
I shrugged in the dark. “Yeah. That’s my driveway.”
He slowed some more. The downstairs lights were on, and I tensed and sat forward. “Is everything ok?” Luke asked.
“My nephew is sick. Thank you for the ride.” I jumped out of the car as soon as he stopped it and bolted into the house, softly calling to Charlie. I found him on the couch in the living room, curled up and looking wan.
“Hi pal,” I said, putting the back of my hand on his forehead to feel for a fever. “How are you doing?”
“It hurts!” he burst out, then flung his arms around my neck as I pulled him into my lap.
A while later, after extensive time in the bathroom and with acan of Vernors to settle his tummy, Charlie was finally asleep. Exhausted, I sat at the kitchen table, forehead in my hands. The car was dead. Roy could easily fire me if I kept skipping out on work.
What was I going to do? What was I going to do?
∞
“See, this is fun!” I huffed as we pedaled up a small hill on M-22. “I love bike riding!”
Charlie, red-faced and panting, glanced back over his shoulder at me and swerved off the narrow shoulder and into the road. “Look forward! Pay attention!” I shouted as another car sped past us. “Slow down!” I hollered as it disappeared over the top of the hill.
Charlie stopped. “No, not you, pal. I meant the car.”
He leaned his head onto the handlebars of his bike. “Emmy, I don’t want to ride anymore. I’m tired!”
I rubbed his sweaty back. It wasn’t very warm, but the hills sucked. And he had been up sick late into the night. “I know. We’re almost there. I have to get to the store. Martha opens at nine.”
