All stories › Family Drama › Halfway on Route 9 › Episode 2
Two Seats
Episode 2 of 3 of Halfway on Route 9 by Amy Fenwick · free to read
Sunday, 4:58 p.m.
Sam laid the Corbin lease on my dash through the open window before I had the car in park. A renewal notice, one page, folded in thirds. On time for the first Sunday since August, and standing at my window like he had always been the early one.
“It went up four hundred,” he said.
I had texted him Monday. One word, Ashford, and a question mark. He had texted back, Sunday, in person, and nothing else all week.
“It was up June thirtieth. Eleven fifty to fifteen fifty. Same unit. Same carpet.”
“So you went to Ashford,” I said.
“The equipment dealer out there needed a parts desk,” he said. “Four dollars more an hour, days, no weekends. Two bedrooms for eleven hundred, and a yard. He has his own room, Leah. With a door.”
“He has a door here.”
“I know he has a door here.”
Milo was in my back seat with the headphones on, in the seat with the red armrest. It was Sam’s week. He was going to Ashford tonight, and he knew it was Ashford, and I had not.
“The plan says notice of a move,” I said. “Thirty days, in writing.”
“I know what the plan says. I knew where the writing would go.” He looked at the pumps instead of me. “It goes to the mediator, and the mediator asks how a school week works from Ashford.”
“How does a school week work from Ashford?” I said.
“I drive him,” he said. “Before-care takes him at seven thirty, and he does his reading in the car. I’m at the desk by nine and off it at four twenty-five. Aftercare has him until six, and I’m there by five fifty.”
“Aftercare closes at six.”
“I know what time it closes,” he said. “I have not missed a day.”
I let him have that. It was true. It was also three hours of driving a day, and he had said it like a weather report.
Sunday, 5:06 p.m.
He opened his trunk. There was a second booster seat in it, the same gray, with the tag still zip-tied to the strap.
“So it doesn’t have to move,” he said.
“It’s always moved.”
“It’s always moved because there was one,” he said. “Now there’s one in each car. He gets in, he’s got a seat.”
I looked at the old one in my back seat, with CAPTAIN on the armrest, and Milo in it, not listening.
“Keep yours,” Sam said. “This one lives with me.”
“There’s something else,” he said.
“There’s something else.”
“The station isn’t halfway anymore.”
“No.”
“Halfway now is a feed store with a cow on the sign,” he said. “Fiberglass. You can’t miss it.”
“A cow.”
“A big one,” he said. “Forty-five for you, forty-five for me. I clocked it both ways.”
“The plan says the Route 9 station.”
“The plan says halfway,” he said. “It says the station because the station was halfway.”
“Ten minutes more for me. Each way. Every Sunday.”
“Ten less for me,” he said. “Even.”
“You moved, Sam.”
“I moved.”
“So you drive it.”
“I’ve been driving it,” he said. “Since June. I’m asking for ten.”
“And you want five thirty. That’s the next thing.”
“Five thirty instead of five. Yes.”
“No. Five.”
“Five, then.”
“I’m not saying yes to the cow.”
“I’m not asking you to say it today.”
Milo climbed out of my car and walked between the doors with his backpack. He got into the new seat in Sam’s car and pulled the belt across himself. Sam fed it through the guide and tugged it twice.
The old seat stayed in my back seat. It was the first Sunday in two years it had not gone where he went.
Sunday, 9:15 p.m.
The porch light came on by itself while I sat in the driveway. I had the phone out and his two numbers in my head, forty-five and forty-five.
I checked them, because he had said even, and Sam had never once said even about anything.
Home to the feed store, forty-one. Ashford to the feed store, forty-nine. He had picked a lot four minutes closer to me and called it the middle.
He had been buying gas at 4:06 so he could be fourteen minutes late. I had been writing the fourteen on a calendar with my mother’s red pen.
The dome light was still on over the empty seat. CAPTAIN, in marker, in a five year old’s capitals, the C bigger than the rest.
I cried once then, with the dome light off, so the neighbors would only see a car.
At 9:40 the phone lit up on the dash. Sam.
Cow or station. Your call. I’ll be at whichever.
I turned the phone face down and sat with it.
Where we met next Sunday was mine to pick.