“Nah,” he said. “Just my dad. He’s a little . . . controlling about the business.”
“You forgot to frost some cupcakes?”
He glanced over at me, as if surprised I was capable of humor. “Something like that,” he said. “I have to make a stop on the way home. If you don’t mind.”
“It’s your car,” I said with a shrug.
As we merged onto the highway, the phone rang again. Nate grabbed it, glancing at the display, then flipped it open. “Hello? Yes. I’m on the way. On the highway. Ten minutes. Sure. Okay. Bye.”
This time, he didn’t put the phone down, instead just keeping it in his hand. After a moment, he said, “It’s just the two of us, you know. Living together, working together. It can get . . . kind of intense.”
“I know,” I said.
Maybe it was because my mother was on my mind, but this came out before I even realized it, an unconscious, immediate reaction. It was also the last thing I wanted to be talking about, especially with Nate, but of course then he said, “Yeah?”
I shrugged. “I used to work with my mom. I mean, for a while anyway.”
“Really?” I nodded. “What’d you do?”
“Delivered lost luggage for the airlines.”
He raised his eyebrows, either surprised or impressed. “People really do that?”
“What, you think they just get teleported to you or something? ”
“No,” he said slowly, shooting me a look. “I just mean . . . it’s one of those things you know gets done. You just don’t actually think of someone doing it.”
“Well,” I said, “I am that someone. Or was, anyway.”
We were taking an exit now, circling around to a stop-light. As we pulled up to it, Nate said, “So what happened?”
“With what?”
“The luggage delivery. Why did you quit?”
This time, I knew enough not to answer, only evade. “Just moved on,” I said. “That’s all.”
Thankfully, he did not pursue this further, instead just putting on his blinker and turning into the front entrance of the Vista Mall, a sprawling complex of stores and restaurants. The parking lot was packed as we zipped down a row of cars, then another before pulling up behind an old green Chevy Tahoe. The back door was open, revealing an extremely cluttered backseat piled with boxes and milk crates, which were in turn filled with various envelopes and packing materials. A woman with red hair coiled into a messy bun wearing a fuzzy pink sweater and holding a to-go coffee cup in one hand was bent over them, her back to us.
Nate rolled down his window. “Harriet,” he called out.
She didn’t hear him as she picked up a crate, shoving it farther back. An empty coffee cup popped out and started to roll away, but she grabbed it, stuffing it in another box.
“Harriet,” Nate repeated. Again, no answer as she bent deeper over a crate.
“You’re going to have to be louder,” I told him as he was barely speaking above a normal tone of voice.
“I know,” he said. Then he took a breath, wincing slightly, and put his hand on the horn.
He only did it once, and it was quick: beep! Still, the woman literally jumped in the air. Completely vertical, feet off the ground, coffee spilling out of the cup backward, splattering the pavement. Then she whirled around, her free hand to her chest, and goggled at us.
“Sorry,” Nate called out. “But you weren’t—”
“What are you doing? ” she asked him. “Are you trying to give me a nervous attack?”
“No.” He pushed open his door, quickly climbing out and walking over to her. “Here, let me get that. It’s these three? Or the crates, too?”
“All of them,” the woman—Harriet?—said, clearly still flustered as she leaned against the Tahoe’s bumper, flapping a hand in front of her face. As Nate began to load the boxes into the back of his car, I noticed she was rather pretty, and had on a chunky silver necklace with matching earrings, as well as several rings. “He knows I’m a nervous person,” she said to me, gesturing at Nate with her cup. “And yet he beeps. He beeps!”
“It was an accident,” Nate told her, returning for the last box. “I’m sorry.”
Harriet sighed, leaning back against the bumper again and closing her eyes. “No,” she said, “it’s me. I’m just under this massive deadline, and I’m way behind, and I just knew I wasn’t going to get to the shipping place before they closed—”
“—which is why you have us,” Nate finished for her, shutting his own back door with a bang. “I’m taking them over right now. No worries.”
“They all need to go Ground, not Next Day,” she told him. “I can’t afford Next Day.”
“I know.”
“And be sure you get the tracking information, because they’re promised by the end of the week, and there’s been bad weather out West. . . .”
“Done,” Nate told her, pulling his door open.
Harriet considered this as she stood there clutching her coffee cup. “Did you drop off that stuff at the cleaners yesterday? ”
“Ready on Thursday,” Nate told her.
“What about the bank deposit?” she asked.
“Dad did it this morning. Receipt is in the envelope in your mailbox.”
“Did he remember to—”