The Buick My Granddaughter Drove Home

He is a tired man trying to keep two families glued together from nine hundred miles away, and he had been told a story.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “I can’t get home till the twentieth.” I told him I did not want him to do a thing except one.

I wanted him to call the school, if it came to that, and sign Hadley out for an afternoon.

“Where are you taking her?” he asked. I told him I did not know yet, but I would find the nearest opening and drive her myself.

He was quiet again, and then he said, “Thanks, Mom,” in a voice that sounded ashamed.

“Don’t you be ashamed,” I said. “You be home on the twentieth and you have a talk with your wife. That part is yours, not mine.”

He said he would. I believed him. Pete has never once told me he would do something and not done it.

The next morning I called my insurance agent. I have had the same agent for twenty-two years, and his office smells like burnt coffee and old carpet.

I asked him whether Hadley was covered to take her test in my car.

He looked it up while I waited. She was, he said, as a permit holder driving with a licensed adult, and once she was licensed he would want her listed on the policy as an occasional driver. It would cost me about eleven dollars a month.

“Do it,” I said. “Starting the day she passes.” He laughed and said I sounded awfully sure she would pass. I told him I had watched her park, and I was sure.

Then I drove over to the grocery store at three, when I knew Hadley would be starting her shift, and I waited in the lot until she came out on her break.

She came and sat in my passenger seat with a bottle of water.

“Grandma, what are you doing here?” she asked. I told her I wanted to look at test dates, and I wanted her to show me how.

She looked at me a long moment. Then she took out her phone without a word.

Sidney’s next opening was five weeks out. Hadley scrolled through the other offices. Chappell had nothing for a month.

Kimball, forty miles west on the old highway, had one opening that very week, Thursday at one thirty in the afternoon.

“That’s a school day,” Hadley said. “And it’s forty miles.” I told her her father had already said he would call the school, and that forty miles was nothing to a Buick.

She looked down at the phone and her eyes filled up.

“Book it,” I said. She booked it. Then she put her phone face down on her knee and said, “Trina’s going to be mad.”

I told her Trina did not need to know a thing about it until it was done.

“Is that lying?” she asked me. That is the kind of girl she is. I thought about it honestly, because she deserved an honest answer.

“No,” I said. “It’s keeping your own business. You’ll tell her. You’ll just tell her after.”