🔹 PART 4 – Call Me Driver
The next morning, Emily stood at the kitchen sink, staring at the backyard. The clothesline sagged with frost, and the garden beds were hidden beneath soft drifts. For a moment, it all looked like a memory — still, quiet, untouchable.
Her father was humming in the next room. Some old Glen Campbell tune. Off-key, warm.
It used to annoy her. Now it made her heart feel fuller.
She opened the back door and called softly, “Sammy?”
The old dog padded out, stiff but determined, sniffing the snow like it might tell him where to walk.
Emily followed him barefoot, cold biting at her soles. She didn’t care.
She stopped in the middle of the yard and looked down. Right there, under the maple tree, was the spot.
They’d built their first snowman together there.
She couldn’t have been more than five. Her gloves were too big and kept falling off. Her dad had brought out two mismatched buttons and a carrot from the crisper drawer. When they ran out of coal for the mouth, he broke a pencil in half and used that instead. The snowman’s grin had been crooked, toothy. Almost sad.
She remembered how he stood back with his hands on his hips and said, “He looks like someone who’s been waiting for something too long.”
She hadn’t understood it then.
But she did now.
Later that day, she found more pieces of him.
Not the dramatic kind. The quiet kind.
In the hall closet: a shoebox labeled “Unclaimed Lost and Found.” Inside were gloves, a baby rattle, a library card from 2009.
On each item, he had scribbled the date and where he found it.
“Feb 2012 – Front seat. Belongs to someone who still reads.”
“Nov 2015 – Fell from her bag. She was crying. I didn’t ask.”
“March 2017 – Rattle. No one came back for it.”
Emily sat on the floor and read every note.
Each one felt like a stitch closing some tear inside her.
This was her father. This man who drove in silence and gathered the quiet remains of people’s lives and carried them home without ever being asked to.
That night, she asked if she could ride his full route.
“Won’t be glamorous,” he warned.
“Wasn’t asking for glamour,” she said.
They left before sunrise. The depot was barely lit. The buses slept like giants, wrapped in steam and the faint smell of diesel.
Route 7. Bus #1935.
She sat two seats behind him, just like when she was nine.
The streets were still dark. Streetlights blinked through the mist.
First passenger: a young nurse. Pale, tired. She nodded at James, murmured “morning,” and took her seat without another word.
Second: an old man with a cane, who grunted as he climbed the steps and muttered something about his back.
Third: a teen with pink headphones and glitter shoes who smiled big at her dad and said, “Hey, Mr. J!”
He gave her a gentle salute. “Morning, Miss April.”
Emily’s head turned.
He remembered her name. Remembered all their names.
Every stop added more souls. Silent ones. Sad ones. Rushed ones. Hopeful ones. Emily watched how he greeted each of them—not with forced cheer, but with something steadier. Recognition. Respect.
And they gave it back.
A nod. A whispered “thanks.” A pause before exiting.
Like each one knew, somehow, that this man saw them in ways the world didn’t bother to anymore.
At the turnaround point—where Route 7 looped near an old shopping center—he pulled into a small lot, cut the engine, and leaned back.
Emily sat forward.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why’d you never leave? Syracuse, I mean. This job. This… life.”
He looked out the windshield for a long time before answering.
“Because leaving would’ve meant I was chasing something. And I already had what I wanted.”
She blinked.
“You did?”
He nodded.
“Your mom. You. This seat. It wasn’t much, Em. But it was mine. I got to matter in small ways.”
She swallowed.
“I used to think you settled,” she admitted.
He didn’t flinch.
“You weren’t wrong to think that,” he said. “I did settle. But not because I gave up. Because I looked around, and realized I didn’t need bigger.”
A quiet moment passed.
“I wanted you to go,” he added. “Wanted you to get out. See more. Be more. But I also hoped…” He trailed off.
“Hoped what?”
“That one day, you’d see this seat different.”
Emily reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the little drawing she took from the garage board.
She handed it to him silently.
He looked down.
Then laughed, soft and surprised. “I remember this. She gave it to me when her dad came back from rehab.”
Emily nodded. “That’s you in the window, right?”
He held the paper like it might fall apart.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “That’s me.”
That evening, as the snow returned and the wind picked up, Emily stood in the backyard again, beneath the old maple tree.
She bent down and scooped the first ball of snow.
Then another.
And another.
By the time she was done, her fingers ached and her jeans were soaked. But there, in the middle of the yard, stood a lopsided snowman with button eyes, a pencil grin, and a bent carrot nose.
Her father watched from the porch.
“You remember,” he said.
She turned. “How could I forget?”
He stepped down, walked over, and placed his old bus badge on the snowman’s chest.
They stood in silence, father and daughter, facing the crooked grin together.
Then Emily whispered, “Let’s not wait so long next time.”
He smiled.
“First stop, right?”
She nodded.