Christy Marks had driven a taxi in this city for twelve years, long enough to know that every fare was a story folded into a backseat. Some were loud, some were silent. Some left nothing behind but crumpled receipts and the ghost of cheap perfume. But Christy remembered them all, because Christy was the kind of woman who paid attention.
The young woman was quiet. Then, softly: “What happened to him?”
One rainy Tuesday evening, Christy picked up a fare from the Amtrak station. A young woman, maybe twenty-five, dragging a suitcase with a broken wheel and wearing a coat too thin for November. She looked like she’d been crying, but not recently—more like the crying had settled into her bones.
She watched the woman walk to the shelter’s door, watched a counselor open it and guide her inside. Then Christy Marks put Mabel back in gear and pulled away into the rain, the city opening up before her like a long, dark road full of passengers who just needed someone to see them, even for a few miles.
And somewhere in the backseat, on the floor mat where the young woman had been sitting, a single silver earring glinted in the passing streetlights—a small, forgotten thing. Christy would find it the next morning, and she’d put it in the glove compartment with all the others: a tiny museum of people who had passed through her cab, each one a story she would carry, just in case they ever came back looking for what they’d left behind.
The woman’s eyes glistened. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, and pressed it into Christy’s hand. “Keep the change.”
The woman gave an address on the south side, near the old industrial district. Christy knew that area. Empty warehouses, a few struggling businesses, and a shelter for domestic violence survivors.
