The Last Ride Home

My name is Tom Walters, I'm 52 years old, and I drive a shuttle van in Marietta, the little desert town next to Fort Baxter. Three years ago my wife Ellen died, and after that I sold the house up north and moved out here because it was warm and nobody knew me. That part worked. The nobody knew me part, I mean. The lonely part never really left.

That morning I pulled the van into the lot of the Sundown Diner to grab coffee before my airport run. That's where I saw her.

Let me back up. First there was the soldier.

"Hey, you the shuttle guy?" a kid in uniform asked, waving at me from the curb. Douglas Arnold, 28 years old, headed back to base from leave.

"That's me. Hop in."

"Cool. I got zero idea how long the drive takes, so if I'm gonna miss roll call, just tell me now and I'll panic early."

"You're fine. Twenty minutes if I don't hit traffic, and there's never traffic."

He threw his bag in the back and climbed in. "You always drive this route?"

"Pretty much. Diner to airport to base, base to airport to diner. I'm basically a meteor that only travels in one direction."

He laughed at that. "You been out here long?"

"Three years. You?"

"I'm stationed here, so, going on two. It's got a certain charm. Real flat charm."

We rolled past the strip malls, and that's when the diner came into view again, because the route doubles back, and I looked over at the big front window like I always do, and that's when I saw her.

Blonde hair with some gray in it now, tied back. Waitress apron. Laughing at something a coworker said behind the counter. I knew that laugh. I knew it from about 1988, from a girl a year behind me in high school who used to sit two rows over in study hall.

Caroline Prentiss.

"Whoa, you okay over there?" Douglas asked. "You just went real quiet."

"I think I just saw a ghost," I said. "A friendly one."

"Should I be concerned that my driver is seeing ghosts?"

"Only the kind that used to borrow my eraser in study hall. You're safe."

He wanted the whole story after that, and I gave it to him, all twenty minutes of it, which tells you how the rest of my day was going to go.

So that was the morning. I dropped him at the base, ran my other fares, and I thought about her the whole day, which was embarrassing and also kind of great. Caroline Prentiss. She'd had a way of rolling her eyes at the smart-aleck boys that made them try harder, and I was one of the smart-aleck boys, so mostly all I got was eye rolls. Which, I should note, I earned every one.

By dusk I was done for the day and I found myself pulling the van into the Sundown Diner lot again. I told myself it was for coffee. I'm a bad liar even to myself, but I went with it.

The place was closing, chairs up on tables, and I saw a woman out front struggling with the lock, and then I heard the car. Sputtering. That wet, dying-engine sound every guy knows and dreads. She turned the key again and the car coughed and quit.

"Come on, come on," she said through the open window.

"You need a jump?" I called over. "Or a tow? Or maybe just a minute of quiet while it thinks about what it's done?"

She straightened up and turned around, and I watched her recognize me. Her hand went to her chest.

"Tom? Tom Walters?"

"Hey, Caroline Prentiss."

"Oh my god!" She came over a few steps and stopped, like she wasn't sure about the hug, so I held my arms out a little and she came the rest of the way and we hugged quick and warm. "Tom Walters, in Marietta. Of all the towns."

"Yeah, I moved out here three years ago. You?"

"Born here, actually. Raised here. My husband Ray and I came back after the Army moved us around for a decade." She paused, and I watched her decide to say the next part. "He passed five years ago."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I meant it, because I know what those words cost to say out loud. "Ellen died three years ago for me. Cancer."

"Tom, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah. It's a club nobody joins on purpose."

She laughed, a little wet around the eyes. "Okay, that's a terrible thing to bond over, and yet here we are, bonding."

"Your car sound like that all the time or just for special occasions?"

"Just for me. It's been making noises for a month and I've been ignoring it like a champ."

"Want a ride home? I've got the van, no fares left, all the dignity still intact."

"Oh, Tom, you don't have to..."

"I know I don't have to. I'm offering. And I get to be honest, I was coming in here for coffee anyway, so if you want to consider this me needing a navigator, feel free."

She looked at the dead car, then at me. "Okay. Yeah. Let me just grab my bag and leave a note for Marci, my coworker, she'll come by and laugh at me. She loves when the car does this, it's like a hobby for her."

Five minutes later we were rolling through town with the windows cracked. She smelled like coffee and vanilla, the way diners get into your clothes.

"So study hall," she said, settling into the seat. "You really remember that?"

"Caroline, you were two rows over and you had this way of looking at the clock like it owed you money."

She cracked up. "That is so specific. I did hate that clock."

"Did you ever get out of Marietta?"

"Six years in Germany, actually, with Ray. Then back here. Diner keeps me busy. What about you? You married?"

"I was. Twenty-six years, almost. Ellen. We met at 21, married at 23."

"Wow. Twenty-six years. That's beautiful, Tom."

"It was. It really was. What about you and Ray?"

"Married at 24. He was a good man. Dry sense of humor, never met a grill he couldn't burn something on." She smiled out the window. "I miss the dumb stuff. The little arguments. Who left the cabinet open."

"Cabinet doors," I said. "Ellen could open a cabinet with her mind, I swear. Never closed a single one."

"Ray never replaced the toilet paper roll in twenty-two years of marriage. Twenty-two years, Tom. I did the math once and got sad."

We were both laughing, and then it got quiet in a way that wasn't awkward exactly, but it wasn't nothing either. She was looking at me, and I could feel it, so I glanced over, and she didn't look away.

"You know," she said slowly, "I had the biggest crush on you in high school. I was a year behind you, remember. You probably knew."

"I absolutely did not know."

"Well, I did. Every day. Two rows over from study hall, watching you make somebody laugh."

"Caroline, I would have given anything to hear that in 1988."

"Yeah, well, 1988 wasn't ready for us, apparently." She turned back to the window, but she was smiling. "Thirty-some years later, here we are."

"Here we are," I said, and my voice came out quieter than I planned.

Her street was on the older side of town, small houses with gravel driveways and desert plants doing their best. She pointed out a blue one with a wind chime on the porch.

"This is me. Thanks for the rescue, Tom, really."

"Anytime. Seriously. I drive past this street twice a day, so if the car dies again, just stand out front looking tragic."

She got out, then leaned back in the door before shutting it. "Hey. Do you want to come in? I've got a beer, or I can make coffee, though you've probably had enough coffee for one lifetime."

I sat there a second. My heart was doing something unprofessional, but I kept my face steady.

"Yeah," I said. "I'd like that."

Her kitchen was small and clean, with one of those little round tables. She pulled two bottles from the fridge and we ended up on the couch in the living room, close enough that our knees bumped when she turned to face me.

"Okay, so tell me everything," she said. "Ellen. How'd you meet?"

"Community college. She beat me at pool and then felt bad about it and bought me a Coke. That essentially constituted the courtship. She won things and apologized for it."

Caroline laughed so hard she had to set her bottle down. "That sounds amazing."

"She was. What about you and Ray? How'd he corner you?"

"He didn't corner me, I cornered him. He was shy. Took me four months of sitting at his table at the mess hall to get him to ask me out."

"Four months of sitting at his table. Ray never had a chance."

"Not one," she said, grinning.

We kept going like that, trading stories, and somewhere in there her hand ended up resting on the cushion between us, close to mine, not quite touching. Neither of us moved it. The lamp hummed. The wind chime rang out front.

"Tom," she said, after a while. "Can I ask you something kind of forward?"

"Go ahead," I said. "Forward sounds good right now."

"Are you lonely? Like, actually lonely? Because I am. I've