CHAPTER ONE
Redheads have more fun—and I would know. I’ve had every shade of hair under the sun. Platinum blonde with extensions, pink streaks, a purple moment in college with wash-in color that was not worth what I paid the girl down the hall to dye it.
Currently, my hair is the same shade of red as the face of the woman across from me, the conductor of the number five train, green line. The Chicago subway system is overrun and undersanitized, the workers who maintain it overworked and underpaid.
But this woman? This woman is a gem. I wouldn’t have learned her name if it weren’t for the badge peeking out of her uniform pocket, but in just a forty-minute interview, I’ve learned Rita’s entire life story. She’s been in this industry for ten years, starting as a custodian after her deadbeat boyfriend left when she got pregnant. Night school for engineering and solo parenting and sheer determination have landed her here, across from me.
The heat in her conductor’s cab is busted, but the glow on her face is pride. The glow on mine is sweat. I wipe it from my brow, the plastic of my podcasting microphone threatening to slide right out of my hand.
“How long do repairs take?” I ask. “This has to be a health hazard.”
Her cheeks turn rosier, and she ducks her head. Interesting. “Could be a month or two. But it’s not anything to bother the maintenance crew with.” The blush is creeping toward her neck now.
When you’ve been doing this job as long as I have—when you love it as much as I do—you learn exactly where opportunities lie, and you go after them. It’s why I can’t let go of Rita’s blush. “Do you not get along with someone there?”
“Everyone’s great.” She adjusts in her seat, green eyes flitting to mine. Her thumbs spin around themselves, nails blurring in a vortex of red polish. “They’re just so busy. I figure Isaac has more important things to do than fix the AC in my cabin.”
“And Isaac’s the maintenance tech?”
She blinks. “Oh, shit. I’m not supposed to name names, am I?”
I wave her off. The slight breeze feels too good on my sticky skin, but I ignore it. The subway tunnels rush past us outside the lone window, too-loud music of a passenger carrying from out in the main car. All things that can be fixed later in post-production. But I can’t edit out the stale recycled air, even if it does smell of bug spray and, randomly, Funyuns. I switch to mouth breathing.
“Elle on the L is completely anonymous,” I confirm, “but feel free to speak normally. I’ll bleep out names, defining places or characteristics. Anything you want, really.”
The twiddling stops. “Shit,” she says. “I said ‘shit’ just now. And then I said it again.”
“Don’t worry.” A smile stretches my face. “I keep all the curse words in.”
The skin around her eyes crinkles with a small grin of her own, but she bites down on it. I dip my chin in encouragement. I’m so close.
“Isaac is the maintenance supervisor,” she says on an exhale. “He, um. He’s really nice to me.” Her voice trails off, leaving me to fill in the gaps.
“You like him.”
“It passed ‘like’ about four years ago.” She sighs, her hands finally coming to rest
in her lap. “I’m in love with him now.”
The adoration on her face is contagious, and I lean into the butterflies raring up in my stomach. “What’s your favorite thing about him?”
So far, I’ve led our conversation, but she takes the reins now. My podcast guests always tell their own story, for better or for worse.
They aren’t always this lighthearted.
Rita tells me about her and Isaac’s mutual disgust of the breakroom snack options. His kind attitude and how he’s paid for her lunch a few times when she’s forgotten her wallet or hasn’t been able to justify the expense. Their rushed conversations out on the street corner over chili dogs that are cold by the time lunch is over because they’re too busy laughing and talking to spare a single bite. How last Christmas he bought a model train for her son exactly like the one she drives, down to the serial number hand painted on the side.
If Isaac isn’t in love with her too, I will lick the subway floor.
“So he’s dependable,” I summarize, steering us back on track. No pun intended, et cetera.
That same soft smile lightens her eyes. “The most dependable person I’ve ever met.”
“And you didn’t think he’d service the AC? Or, for that matter, service you?”
“You talk to your elders that way?” She chuckles. “Who raised you?”
A wave of nostalgia hits me directly in the chest; my elder is who raised me. I wink. “Where do you think I learned it? So. Isaac. Do you have his number?”
She narrows her gaze. “Yes … why?”
“Call him. Right now. Tell him how you feel.”
She jolts forward. “I can’t! He’s working!”
“So are you. So am I.”
She messes with a loose thread on the seam of her pants. “I don’t know …”
I reach into my purse and produce a can of mints, holding it out for her. “Even if you don’t confess your feelings,” I say, “you still need to call him about the AC. I’m almost positive my thighs are melted onto the plastic.”
Grumbling, she pulls her phone from her pocket. It takes very few clicks for her to find his number.
After another two seconds, she takes a mint.
“It’s ring—”
A deep voice cuts
off her comment. She swallows, then coughs. So much for icy-fresh breath. “Hey, you,” he says. I can hear his smile. And she doesn’t think her feelings are reciprocated?
“The air went out in my cab again.”
I hear a muffled, “And you’re running until eight tonight.”
He knows your schedule, I mouth, bouncing my eyebrow. She waves me off, but the blush on her cheeks is turning into a permanent fixture. I am giddy for a complete stranger.
Isaac continues. “I’ll be right there. I can ride this next loop with you while I fix it. If you’ll have me.”
I hold the microphone closer to my mouth, murmuring, “For everyone at home, the wedding speech is writing itself.”
She freezes, eyes locking with mine. I give her a big thumbs-up and a nod so enthusiastic it hurts my neck.
“Do you … um.” Rita’s thumb rubs the seam of her pants. “Do you want to get dinner sometime? With me. If I can find a sitter.”
My heartbeat suspends in my throat. I inhale deeply.
Well, as deeply as you can on a Chicago subway. In addition to the Funyuns and the bug spray, now it smells like piss.
“Yes,” Isaac says immediately, loud and clear. She grins bright enough to light the whole city. “But I would still want to get dinner sometime if you couldn’t find a sitter. Henry’s a good kid.”
After promising to talk more about their upcoming date in person, she clumsily hangs up the phone, and I can’t help myself—I hug her, sweat and Funyuns and all.
When I pull back, she presses her palms to her cherry-red cheeks. “We’ve got to be running out of time.”
“Thank you for talking with me today.” I put every ounce of earnestness I can into my voice. “And to my listeners, wherever you are in the world, you are loved. You matter. You’re important. Until next time, this is Elle on the L. Catch the train with me.”
After packing up my equipment and nabbing an out-the-door promise from Rita to send me a wedding invitation, I step out of the conductor’s car. A handsome middle-aged man carrying a tool bag passes me. I’d bet my last dollar his name is Isaac.
I’ve got my mind set on the café on the corner as I make my way up the stairs into early-fall sunlight. I’m reaching for the coffee shop door when my phone rings in my bag.
I bypass an errant floss pick, the pack of mints from earlier, and a pair of feather earrings—there those are—before I pull it free.
Angie from AngelCare scrolls across the screen in an endless loop. Angie is a senior nurse from the company I hired to manage my grandmother Lovie’s Alzheimer’s disease, and her case manager. She doesn’t usually call with good news. Around me, commuters and tourists
move in a blur, but my feet are stuck to the sidewalk and my heart is stuck in my throat.
Someone bumps my shoulder, and I move to the side as I answer before my phone rings out. “Hello?”
“Elle,” Angie says. “How are you? You’re not working, are you?”
“Just finished up.” I lean against the café, taking care not to touch the questionable spots on the plaster that could be bird shit but could also be bodily fluids. “What’s wrong?”
Her pause is weighted, significant.
“When do you think you’ll be able to make it home next?” Her gentle tone slips into something more tentative. “Lovie’s not doing too well these days.”
My heart turns to stone inside my chest, settling down at the soles of my booties. “Define not too well.”
The longer Angie stays silent, the more my lungs burn and the more my shoes turn to lead.
“She called one of our male nurses Bobby,” Angie says. “We think she’s moving into the next stage.”
My grandfather Bobby passed away three years ago, right before Lovie’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She’s been in the early stages since she took a tumble down her front steps and got a CT scan when she couldn’t remember where she’d been going in the first place.
“We’ve talked before about how the best thing for her is constant care,” Angie reminds me. While I mostly know Angie in a professional setting, life has a way of filling in the cracks through years of casual acquaintance and coffee chats. It’s easy for her to slip into a mothering role with me, considering she has three boys who require constant vigilance.
“That’s fine,” I say, though it doesn’t feel anything close to it. It’s hard to breathe. Financially, it should be okay. I’ve been saving for this for a while now. “If you send me a list of places AngelCare recommends, I can—”
“None of them will take her insurance.”
My brows pinch together. “I thought Medicare covered everything.”
“Medicare does. But Lovie’s not on Medicare. She’s somehow still on your grandfather’s insurance, and that doesn’t cover hospice for spouses.”
“Could I just pay out of pocket? How much would that be? A thousand dollars a month, maybe two? I can swing that.”
She coughs. “A week.” Another cough. “At least.”
I wince. I … did not save that much.
“Besides,” Angie continues, “the risk is too great. They need valid, legal insurance on file to consider her. And even then, there’s a wait list.”
“Can I add her to my plan?” I pay a pretty penny for private-market insurance. Might as well use it.
“If you claim her as a dependent, then yes, but that will take time too.” Like with Rita on the train, I hear what she isn’t saying almost as loudly as what she is: we don’t have time.
I stare at the pastry display through the café window, my hunger quickly fading
“A few weeks?” I guess. The droning noises from the subway have followed me to the street, a buzz in my ears I can’t clear out.
The sound Angie makes now is noncommittal.
“A few months?” I don’t mean it to come out so harsh.
“It’s not ideal.” Angie is an actual angel—the company is aptly named—and overlooks my attitude. “If you got started right away with either getting her enrolled in Medicare or adding her as your dependent, I think a few months is manageable. Hopefully by Christmas.”
“I’m on my way,” I say, before I realize exactly what that means. My feet move of their own accord. “I think there’s an Amtrak that leaves at one. It will be tight, but I’ll make it work.” I nod to myself. I can figure this out.
I have to.
“Elle,” Angie says, more urgently now. “There’s really no need to rush. I’ve already scheduled—”
“No, no. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
And I end the call.
CHAPTER TWO
I collapse in my seat on the train idling in Union Station several hours later, after what will likely go down in history as the Most Annoying Day of My Life.
Earlier, after I hung up with Angie—okay, fine, hung up on Angie—I rushed back to my place to pack up clothes and podcast equipment and anything else I could perceivably need for the next few months.
By the time I made it to the station, I had exactly three minutes to buy a ticket and get to the platform on the other end of the hall. I may or may not have tweaked my ankle attempting the impossible. I bought myself a conciliatory coffee from the kiosk when I missed it, which I spilled all over my shirt.
I pull my headphones over my ears and hold my breath as the train pulls away from the station. With me on board, I’m fully expecting it to break down in the middle of nowhere.
The familiar sounds of my Queens playlist fill my ears as I tuck in for the two-hour ride to my hometown. Not Queen the band. Queens as in queens. Alanis and Janis, Whitney and Britney, Taylor and Adele and Beyoncé. You know. Queens.
And then my headphones die, and I’m forced to watch cornstalks and crop fields whiz by in the dark.
Despite being a large city by most standards, even having the crowning achievement of not one but two Walmarts, Elkhart, Indiana, has always felt like a small town to me. Lovie was never able to go grocery shopping without running into at least one person she knew.
The city’s expanded since I last lived there over ten years ago. On a map, it sort of reminds me of a snowflake: the center dense with restaurants and shotgun houses and parks. The northern spindle stretches and bumps up against Michigan, the southern one leading the way to a prison, a golf course, and a seminary. The priorities of midwestern America, am I right?
Some people leave home and never come back, but I don’t think that will ever be me. I’ve traveled lots of places. New York City for college. Road trips to Myrtle Beach and Philadelphia and Niagara Falls. Aruba, booked on my grandparents’ credit card after one college midterm result that was poorly timed with a bad case of the Mondays and PMS. But nowhere I’ve ever been has felt more like home than home itself.
Except Chicago. That also feels like home.
I’m lucky this way—some people don’t ever feel like they have a place they belong. I have two. I’d take either right now. I’ve never longed for a bed this much in my life.
I’m convinced the only reason I find my baggage and get a Lyft this late is because when I climb off the train and onto familiar Elkhart earth, the clock has rolled over to a brand-new day.
After such a long trip, I appreciate Lovie’s house even more when it finally—finally—comes into view.
The two-bedroom Cape Cod is the same as ever: quaint, colorful, and outdated. The navy-colored vinyl shines black this time of night, and although I can’t see the shutters, I know they’re still painted a gaudy maroon. The stucco behind them is bubblegum pink. I picked that color when I was seven, and Lovie’s kept it ever since.
As quietly as possible, I let myself in and lock the dead bolt before toeing off my shoes. It’s one of Lovie’s personal life rules, to take off your shoes at
the door.
“You walk into public bathrooms with those shoes,” she’d always say when I questioned her on it. “You are not going to bring someone else’s business onto my brand-new carpet.”
The carpet stopped being brand-new fifteen years ago. Then again, maybe making guests go barefoot is how she keeps it fresh.
Pit stopping at the bathroom to splash my face with warm water and slip into pajamas, I look at myself in the mirror, the pink of the walls and tiles making my dark circles and fatigue that much more apparent. This could quite possibly be the longest day of my life.
Moving down the hall, I poke my head in on Lovie’s sleeping form. She’s so frail there in the dark, a walker and cane at the ready by her nightstand. My eyes snag on the bedpan hanging off the edge of her bedside table. That’s a harder pill to swallow.
Once I’m appeased, I haul my shit to the second bedroom, which has been mine for as long as I can remember. My bags find the floor. Unpacking can wait for daylight.
I just barely remember to set an alarm. Lovie probably wakes up at six or seven, so this will be more of a glorified nap than actual solid sleep, but I can do that. For one night, at least. For Lovie.
I think.
It takes three steps to get to the bed, and with every one sleep tugs at my body more and more, my limbs heavy with fatigue.
I fall down onto the mattress.
Or I would have, if there weren’t a suspicious, human-shaped lump right where my body’s supposed to go.
That’s about the time I start screaming. ...
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