A Voice from the Past

As I get into my car today to go home, I feel my purse vibrating ever so slightly. Given the time it is, I assume it is Scott and decide I will get situated in traffic before I call him. Fewer distractions.

And as I am doing the 27 point pre-flight safety check, I hear the familiar ding that tells me I have a voice mail message.

Not Scott. We do not message. Maybe Charlotte?

I peek at the phone.

No. It is J.'s youngest daughter.

WTF????

I think for a second as I orbit the parking garage levels.

Butt dial?  Probably not. Unless she and her butt also left a message.

J. playing a trick, thinking I will pick up if it is his sweet young daughter calling?  Possible.

Or maybe she is calling to tell me that fat old Endorra has bitten the proverbial dust and Daddy is so so sad and won't you please call him (he made me call you).  Entirely plausible.

I wait until I am in no-brainer, car-could-drive-itself traffic and pick up the message.

She identifies herself by first and last name. Like I could ever forget the voice, or would ever take her out of my phone contacts. Of course I know it is her. I would know in an instant.

She simply and calmly asks that I please call her back. She needs to tell me something.

I run through a list of things I might need to know from J.'s 13 year old daughter.

She got her braces off?

She found my astonishingly expensive, kick ass Via Spiga shoes that I forfeited having left them in J.'s closet and never returning. I am sure he sold them on eBay for money to buy cigarettes.

Could it be that Endorra is really dead? As in ding-dong the witch is dead?  And would I need to know? We haven't exactly been on speaking terms for nearly three years. Probably not news I can't live without.

Or something else that is of enormous pre-teen importance, like the time she called to say she liked the silver cheerleader earrings I'd given her for Christmas and she wanted to know where I'd gotten them so she could get a pair for a girl on her squad whose birthday party she was attending in a week. And oh by the way, I think you deserve better than my Dad, but don't tell anyone I said that.

I decide to just get it over with and call.

She answers in one ring. "Hi sweetie! I am sorry I missed your call. What's cooking?"

"Umm, hi, thanks for calling. I wanted to tell you, since you were, you know, important. And since everything that has happened, well, I wanted you to know, my Dad passed away yesterday."

Thank God my car knows the way home. Left up to me, I'd have driven right off the road at that moment.