Ernesto saw the name on his phone screen and his hands went cold despite the Phoenix heat. Maya C. Pickup at the Marriott Downtown. Heading to Sky Harbor.
He could cancel. Say his car broke down. Say anything. His finger hovered over the screen. The air conditioning in his Camry hummed. He'd kept this car perfect for six years. Vacuumed every morning, wiped down the seats with disinfectant. A car that didn't smell like cigarettes or fast food or desperation.
He accepted the ride.
The ten-minute drive to the hotel gave him time to think, which was the last thing he needed. Fifteen years since he'd seen her. She'd been thirteen, all knees and elbows and angry silence. Now twenty-eight according to the math he did constantly, involuntarily, the way other people breathed.
The Marriott's circular drive was clogged with taxis and bellhops. He pulled up to the side entrance and sent the arrival notification. His classical station played Vivaldi soft enough that passengers rarely complained. He adjusted the rearview mirror, then adjusted it back.
She came out pulling a small black suitcase, wearing a navy blazer despite the hundred-degree afternoon. Professional. Put-together. Her mother's nose, his grandmother's cheekbones. She opened the back door and slid in without looking up from her phone.
"Sky Harbor?" he said, keeping his voice steady. His accent had faded over the years, but stress brought it back.
"Terminal 4." She didn't look up. "Thanks."
He pulled into traffic. Washington Street was torn up with construction, orange cones funneling cars into single lanes. The city was always tearing something up to build something else. Maya typed on her phone, the clicks precise and fast.
"Business trip?" he asked, because drivers were supposed to make small talk. Because he needed to hear her voice.
"Conference," she said. "Marketing stuff."
"You like Phoenix?"
She looked up then, out the window at the flat sprawl of beige buildings and strip malls. "It's hot."
"Gets easier. After a while."
"I couldn't live here," she said. "I need trees. Rain. Actual seasons."
"Where's home?"
"Portland."
He'd known that. Had looked her up online late at night when he couldn't sleep. LinkedIn said she was a marketing manager at a software company. Facebook showed pictures of her at breweries, hiking trails, a wedding where she wasn't the bride. No mention of family.
They stopped at a red light. A man stood on the median with a cardboard sign. Veteran. Anything helps. God bless. Ernesto had been there, not on this corner but others like it, those first years after the divorce when work dried up and his pride meant nothing against hunger.
"Must be awful," Maya said, watching the man. "In this heat."
"People do what they have to."
She went back to her phone. He took Van Buren to avoid more construction, past the warehouses and chain link fences, the check-cashing places and immigration law offices with signs in Spanish and English. This wasn't the Phoenix they showed in the tourism ads.
"How long have you been driving?" she asked suddenly.
"Six years."
"You like it?"
"It's okay. I meet people."
"People like me who stare at their phones the whole time?" She had a small smile. Carmen's smile.
"Sometimes people talk. Sometimes they need quiet. Both are fine."
"My dad used to say that," she said, then caught herself. "About people needing different things."
His throat closed. He focused on the road, on the white lines that wavered in the heat.
"He was good at reading people," she continued, almost to herself. "Knowing what they needed. Until he wasn't."
The airport towers appeared ahead, control tower stabbing into the washed-out sky. Fifteen minutes since he'd picked her up. Five more to the terminal. He could stay quiet. Drop her off. Let her go back to Portland thinking her father was still whoever she'd made him in her mind all these years.
"What did he do?" he asked. "Your father?"
She looked at him in the mirror then, really looked. He kept his eyes on the road.
"Contractor. Houses, mostly. But that was a long time ago."
"Here in Phoenix?"
"Yeah. Born here, actually. One of the few." She put her phone in her purse. "He left when I was thirteen. Haven't seen him since."
"That's hard."
"It was. Now it's just... what it is."
They took the Sky Harbor Boulevard exit, circling up to departures. The sun hit the windshield hard, making him squint.
"You have his eyes," she said suddenly. "Same shape. It's weird, I notice that in people. Like I'm looking for him without meaning to."
His hands tightened on the wheel. "Maybe he's looking too."
"I doubt it." Her voice was flat. "If he wanted to find us, he would have. We didn't move. Same house for ten years after he left. Mom kept thinking..." She stopped. "Doesn't matter."
"Maybe he thought you were better off."
"Nobody thinks that. Not really. That's just what people tell themselves when they're afraid."
She was right, of course. Fear had driven everything. Fear of not providing, fear of Carmen's disappointment, fear of Maya growing up seeing him fail and fail again. Fear that turned into leaving, which turned into days, then months, then years, until the distance became its own kind of wall.
"Terminal 4, right?" he said.
"Southwest. Wherever's fine."
He pulled up to the curb. Cars pressed behind them, everyone in a hurry. She got out and came around for her suitcase. He popped the trunk and got out too, something he didn't always do. The heat hit like opening an oven.
She pulled out her bag, looked at him. Up close, she was smaller than he'd expected. Had her mother's build, compact and steady.
"Thanks," she said, then tilted her head. "This is going to sound crazy, but you remind me of someone."
Everything in him stopped. He could say it now. Maya, it's me. Soy tu padre. I'm sorry. I've been sorry every day for fifteen years.
A security officer blew his whistle, pointed at them to move along.
"I get that sometimes," Ernesto said. "Common face."
She smiled, that half-smile again, and handed him a twenty. "Keep it. Thanks for the ride."
"Safe travels."
She walked toward the sliding doors, pulling her suitcase. He stood by the car, watching. At the entrance she paused, turned back. For a moment he thought she knew. Her hand lifted slightly, a small wave or the beginning of something else. Then the doors opened and she was gone.
He got back in the car. The app was already pinging with another ride request. Someone at Terminal 3 heading to Scottsdale. He stared at it until it timed out, then another came. Terminal 2 to downtown.
The classical station was playing Bach now, something with cello. He turned it off, sat in the silence. Cars honked behind him. The security officer started walking over.
He pulled away from the curb, followed the loop back toward the city. The afternoon traffic was building, rivers of cars flowing toward their separate destinations. His phone kept pinging with ride requests. He'd turn the app back on soon. Pick up strangers. Make small talk or not. Drive his clean car through the sprawling city, earning enough for rent and food and the occasional beer at the bar where nobody knew his last name used to be Castellanos.
But not yet. For now, he drove in silence, remembering the weight of that twenty-dollar bill in his hand. She'd always been generous, even as a child. Sharing her Halloween candy with kids who forgot their bags, giving her lunch money to classmates who'd lost theirs. He'd taught her that, at least. Before he'd taught her about leaving.
The sun was starting its descent toward the mountains, painting everything orange and gold. Beautiful light, the photographers called it. Magic hour. But it was just the sun doing what it did, dropping behind the horizon like it had every day before he was born and would every day after he died.
His phone rang. Not the app, his actual phone. Unknown number, Phoenix area code.
He pulled into a Walgreens parking lot, answered on the third ring.
"Is this Ernesto?" A woman's voice, familiar but older.
"Yes."
"The Uber driver? You just dropped someone at the airport?"
"Yes."
"This is Carmen. Maya's mother."
The parking lot tilted. A woman pushed a cart past his car, her kid crying about something.
"She called me," Carmen said. "From the gate. Said her driver looked familiar. Said something about..." She paused. "Ernesto? Are you there?"
"I'm here."
"Was it you?"
He could lie. Say it was coincidence. Phoenix wasn't that big. Stranger things happened.
"Yes," he said.
Silence. He could hear airport noise in the background, announcements about unattended baggage.
"Why didn't you tell her?"
"I don't know."
"That's not good enough."
"I know."
More silence. He remembered these silences, the weight of them. How they'd filled their small apartment those last months, heavier than words.
"She's been looking for you," Carmen said finally. "Not actively, but... you know what I mean."
"She said you stayed in the same house."
"For her. In case." She sighed. "We're both idiots, aren't we?"
"Maybe."
"She's getting on the plane soon. But she'll be back. There's another conference in January."
"Okay."
"Ernesto?"
"Yeah?"
"January's a long time. You have my number now."
She hung up. He sat in the parking lot watching people go in and out of the Walgreens. Regular people doing regular things. Buying shampoo and prescriptions and birthday cards for people they hadn't left.
He picked up his phone, looked at the number. Carmen's number. After all these years, ten digits on a screen.
Another memory: Maya at five, learning to write numbers. Making the 8 over and over, frustrated that the circles wouldn't match. "It doesn't have to be perfect," he'd told her. "Just has to be yours."
Bad advice from someone who'd spent his whole life trying to be perfect, then running when he couldn't.
He could call Carmen back. Drive to that old house he'd paid for until he couldn't. Sit in the kitchen where they'd had Sunday dinners and tax arguments and conversations about Maya's future. Have the talk they should have had fifteen years ago.
Or he could turn his app back on. Pick up strangers. Earn his money.
His phone pinged. Not a ride request. A text from the unknown number that was now saved as Carmen.
"She landed safe in Portland. Thought you'd want to know."
He stared at it for a long time. Then typed back: "Thank you."
Three dots appeared. Carmen typing. They disappeared. Appeared again. Then: "She has your laugh. Still. After everything."
He didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know if it was accusation or absolution or just observation. Carmen had always been hard to read, even when they were young and thought love was enough to overcome different languages and expectations and the weight of two families' histories.
He started to type several responses, deleted them all. Finally sent: "January?"
"We'll see."
Which wasn't yes but wasn't no. Wasn't forgiveness but wasn't the door closing either. It was what it was: two people who'd made a person together, then broken apart, trying to figure out what came after so much after.
He turned his app back on. Immediately got a ping. Airport pickup, Terminal 3. He accepted it, pulled out of the parking lot. The sun was properly setting now, the sky doing its nightly Phoenix show of purples and pinks. His passenger would probably want to talk about how beautiful it was. Or they'd be on their phone the whole time. Either was fine.
The radio stayed off. He drove in silence, thinking about January. About conferences and coincidences and the kind of courage it took to say your name out loud to someone who used to know it. Thinking about Maya's hand lifting at the airport entrance, that small wave that could have meant goodbye or hello or nothing at all.
The airport appeared ahead, same towers, same circling roads. He followed the signs to Terminal 3, to the next stranger who needed to get somewhere. His car was clean. The tank was full. He had work to do.
But January. January was a long time and no time at all. January was a conference and a possibility and a twenty-eight-year-old woman who still had his laugh. January was Carmen's number in his phone and the chance to say what he should have said at a dozen different moments over the last fifteen years:
I'm sorry. I was afraid. I was wrong.
I never stopped loving you both.
I just stopped believing I deserved to.
The pickup location was just ahead. He could see someone waiting with bags, checking their phone. Another stranger, another ride, another twenty minutes of careful conversation or comfortable silence. This was his life now. Had been for six years. Good enough work for someone who'd lost the right to expect more.
But tonight, after this ride and the next and however many until the late hours when the airport finally slowed, he would go home to his small apartment in Tempe. He would sit at his kitchen table with a beer and Carmen's number. He wouldn't call, not yet. But he would think about what to say if he did. Practice the words the way he'd practiced English all those years ago, syllable by syllable until they felt natural in his mouth.
He would think about Maya at thirteen, angry and silent. Maya at twenty-eight, professional and composed but still looking for him in strangers' faces. Maya in January, possibly, maybe, if Carmen thought it was okay and if he could find the courage he'd misplaced somewhere between youth and middle age.
The passenger got in, a businessman heading to Old Town Scottsdale. He wanted to talk about the game, the Suns' chances this year. Ernesto made the right sounds, agreed at the right moments. Drove smooth and steady through the evening traffic.
"You from here?" the man asked.
"Long time now," Ernesto said.
"But originally?"
"El Salvador. But Phoenix is home."
"Family here?"
Ernesto looked in the mirror, met the man's eyes briefly. Just a guy making conversation, killing time between places.
"Yes," he said. "Family here."
It wasn't quite true yet. But it wasn't quite a lie either. It was what he had: a phone number, a conference in January, a daughter who still carried his laugh somewhere in her chest.
Not much. Maybe nothing. But after fifteen years of absolute zero, even the smallest something felt like everything.
He drove on through the falling desert night, his clean car carrying strangers through the city he'd made his home, toward whatever came next.