It was nasty outside, cold and gray, with rain that was trying hard to be snow. But Lincoln couldn’t sit in the airless IT office for another six hours. He decided to drive to McDonald’s for dinner. He felt like something greasy and hot.
The streets were worse than Lincoln expected. He almost got hit by an SUV that couldn’t brake in time for a red light. The whole trip took most of his dinner break, and when he got back to the office, his parking space was gone. He had to park in the overflow lot a few blocks away.
When he first heard the crying, he thought that it was a cat. It was a terrible sound. Mournful. He looked around for it and saw a woman standing next to one of the last cars left in the lot. She was slumped over her car and standing in a giant mud puddle.
When Lincoln got closer, he saw the flat tire and the jack lying in the mud next her.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes.” She sounded more scared than convinced. She was a small woman, solid, with blondish hair.
He’d seen her a few times before, on the day shift. She was soaked through and crying hard. She wouldn’t look at him. Lincoln stood there dumbly, not wanting to make her feel more uncomfortable, but not wanting to leave her alone.
She tried to steady herself. “Do you have a cell phone I could use?”
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry. But I can help you change your tire.”
She wiped her nose, which seemed fruitless, considering how wet she was. “Okay,” she said.
He looked for a place to set down his dinner, but there wasn’t one, so he handed the woman his McDonald’s bag and picked up the lug wrench. She’d already gotten a few of the nuts off the tire; this wouldn’t take long.
“Do you work at The Courier?” she asked. She was still so upset, he wished she wouldn’t try to talk.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Me, too, on the copy desk. My name is Jennifer. What do you do?”
Jennifer. Jennifer?
“Security,” he said, surprising himself. “Systems security.”
He jacked up her car and looked around for the spare. “It’s still in the trunk,” she said. Of course it was. Lincoln couldn’t look at her anymore; what if she recognized him? Maybe it wasn’t her. How many Jennifers worked on the copy desk? He let down the car, opened the trunk, grabbed the tire, jacked the car back up. He was pretty sure she was crying again, but he didn’t know how to comfort her. “I have some French fries in there if you want them,” he said, realizing as soon as he said it that it made him sound like a weirdo. At least she didn’t seem scared of him anymore. When he glanced back at her, she was eating his French fries.
It took about fifteen minutes to change the tire. Jennifer ( Jennifer?) didn’t have a true spare, just one of those temporary tires that new cars come with. She thanked him and gave him back what was left of his dinner.
“That’s just a doughnut,” he said. “You should have your tire fixed as soon as you can.”
“Right,” she said. “I will.” She didn’t seem to be paying attention. He felt like she just wanted him to leave. And he wanted to leave. He waited for her to get into her car and turn on the engine before he walked away. But when he looked back, her car hadn’t moved. He stopped walking.
He wondered why Jennifer—if this was Jennifer, the Jennifer—was crying, what had happened.
Maybe she’d gotten into a fight with Mitch. Maybe she’d started a fight with Mitch. But there was no sign of it in her e-mail. Maybe …
Oh.
Oh.
When was the last time she’d mentioned …Why hadn’t he noticed …He should have guessed when the e-mails stopped, by the way they were talking, by what they weren’t saying.
The baby. He should have realized.
He was so selfish. All he’d cared about was finding himself in their conversations. Not that it would have mattered if he had noticed. Not that he could have said he was sorry or sent her a card.
Lincoln walked back and knocked on her window. It was fogged over. She wiped a circle clear, saw him, and rolled it down.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“I really feel like I should call your husband.”
“He’s not home,” she said.
“A friend, then, or your mom or something.”
“I promise, I’ll be fine.”
He couldn’t leave her alone. Especially now that he knew or thought he knew what was wrong. “If somebody that I cared about was crying alone in a parking lot,” he said, wishing he could tell her that she was somebody he cared about, “at this time of night, I’d want somebody to call me.”