Page 61 of The Liar in Room 5

“I’d prefer to put you on the title too, but I’m not sure you’d let me.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“Great! Then we agree you’ll be driving my car.”

16

Drew

“Hiya, Ben. I’m your chauffeur today,” I said by way of greeting when I arrived at his doorstep.

“Drew, whatchu doing here? Dad,” he hollered over his shoulder, “c’mere fastly.”

Yelling wasn’t necessary because Marc was right behind him. Fortunately for me, Ben was too busy jumping up and down to notice that his dad had been there the entire time.

“Hey, Drew. Thanks for taking this one on.” He glanced down at his son, who was doing some sort of ninja move mixed with a bucking bronco kick in a circle around him, and smiled fondly. “And I guess this answers whether or not Ben’ll be okay with you taking him to school.”

Ben stopped mid-motion and stared up at us.

“I get to go with Drew to school?”

“If that’s okay.”

Rather than answer, Ben returned to his antics, but this time added a few whoops to them.

“Since it’s my first day, we need to get moving so I’m not late.”

Ben didn’t wait to say goodbye to his dad and made a beeline for my new—and borrowed—car. At some point between when Henry bought it and when I’d left his house with it the night before, a carseat had magically appeared in the back seat. Rather than be offended, Marc smiled widely at me and handed over Ben’s Bluey backpack.

I hustled over to the car, got Ben situated, and took off.

The drive to the daycare was only about fifteen minutes from Ben’s house, which he filled by singing loudly along to the radio. Once there and unbuckled, he eagerly grasped my hand and dragged me into the building. He chattered the entire way about how much fun I was going to have playing with his friends because they frolicked the best. Truthfully, I was a little surprised to hear him use that particular word, but yay for great vocabularies.

“Ben, who are you bringing to school today?” Marcia greeted us at the entrance with an enthusiastic smile. “He looks like he belongs, for sure.”

I’d spent a few hours agonizing over the best first-day outfit and finally settled on sturdy cargo shorts, a graphic tee borrowed from the Halo House community closet, and the shoes Henry gave me as a gift.

“Ben, I’m going to have to steal Mr. Drew for a little bit.”

Ben scampered off to play with his friends while Marcia led me toward her office.

“Thanks for agreeing to allow me to work and drive Ben in.”

“Oh, no worries. I know you have a pre-existing relationship with the family, and I’m just glad we were able to steal you away from whatever other options you had.”

“Stealing is probably a strong word for it, but I’m happy to be here,” I answered.

It was sweet of her to pretend I had other options. The only references I could get were Henry, Marc, and Phoenix to attest to my trustworthiness. It’s not like I had any real professional references, and she knew that since she was the one who called around. But if she wanted to pretend I wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel, I wasn’t going to argue with her.

We spent the next hour going through paperwork and filling out payroll forms. The only hiccup came when it asked for my emergency contact. My first instinct was to put my parents down, but that was silly. It’s not like there was anything they could do if something bad happened.

So I took a leap of faith and put Henry’s name down.

My handwriting was a little shaky while I filled it out, but I did it and returned it to Marcia before I could change my mind. She glanced through the paperwork while I waited for her final approval. After flipping through it all, she nodded, smiled at me, stood up from behind her chair, put out her hand, and said, “Welcome to the team.”

“I’m happy to be here.”

Before I returned her handshake, I discreetly wiped my palms on my shorts. Sweaty palms were embarrassing regardless of the reason, and my first day on the job in twenty years was definitely a big deal.