“Who are you?” Michael called out to the man.
The man turned the flashlight on himself so that we could see him. It was the same security guard from the truck stop—the one that the cop had been talking to.
“I work at the truck stop,” he said as he shined the light just beneath his face. I sent the cops off in the other direction. They won’t look for you here yet. You have a little bit of time and if you want to live to see tomorrow, I suggest that you accept my help.”
“How can we trust you?” I asked as I pulled my hand away from Michael and stepped out to see the man against the protest of the guys.
“Well, I guess there’s no way for me to convince you to trust me. But I did know your mother, and I owe Paula my life. So I would gladly help you now in order to repay my debt to her. Besides, it doesn’t look like you have much of a choice anyway.”
He was right—we didn’t.
“How did you know my mother?” I asked.
The man tilted the flashlight down toward the ground to get it out of his eyes. The bright beam illuminated the space between us enough that we could both make each other out.
“When the cops mentioned your name,” he said, “I knew immediately that you were Paula’s daughter. She spoke about you all the time. I saw you a couple of times when you were a child, but I’m sure that you’ve changed a lot since then—we all have. I saw Paula’s death covered on the news. I knew it wasn’t a suicide. Paula would never have taken her own life. But she would have died to protect yours. I saw some stuff on the news about you too. It seems like you had a propensity for getting mixed up in trouble.”
I rolled my eyes in the dark.
“Yeah, it’s not really by choice but trouble does seem to have a knack for finding me.”
“I don’t trust this guy,” Rob said under his breath.
Michael made a huffing noise, and I could see by Adam’s postured stance that none of the guys trusted the guard. They were all extremely suspicious of him and rightly so. We’d all been betrayed so much that we’d be stupid to take anyone at face value at this point.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “How did you know my mother?”
“I remember a time that your family spent a summer in New York,” the man answered. “Not far from here actually. I think Paula said that you guys had come to visit Niagara and see the Falls. I was homeless at the time, living on the streets as a disheveled teen.”
He made a sort of snorting noise as if he was recollecting a past memory with both pain and amusement.
“People used to walk past me on the street and call me a sea urchin. I guess I did kind of look like one. But Paula saw something else in me, something no one else ever had,” he continued. “I had a part time job bussing tables at a local seafood restaurant. It was just enough money to pay for food and the occasional bottle of alcohol that I convinced some of the older people on the streets to buy for me as long as I gave them a share of it. Your family came into that restaurant at least a few times over the course of your visit here.”
“What’s your name?” I interrupted to ask him. I don’t know why I felt it was important, but since he was sharing memories of my mother with me, it just seemed like I should know his name.
“Frank,” he answered. “Frank Bastian. It’s funny, because your mother asked me my name too. She was one of the only people who had ever cared enough to ask me for my name.”
“Why do you feel that you owe my mother a debt, Frank?” I asked him. Surely just asking him for his name wouldn’t be enough to prompt him to even remember my mother.
“The first time that I served your family dinner at the restaurant, your mother noticed my shoes. They were so badly falling apart that I had duct-taped them together to stay on my feet. After your family had finished dinner, and your father had paid the bill, your mother went to use the restroom while your father took you out to the car. When she came out, she asked the manager if she could speak to me and I thought that I had done something wrong or screwed up your dinner. I was sure that I was about to get into trouble. But instead, your mother slipped me a five-hundred-dollar cash tip and told me to get new shoes.”
That sounded like something my mother would do, I thought as I smiled to myself. She always wanted to help people, and most especially she wanted to help the people that others most often overlooked.
“Your family came back to eat at the restaurant a few more times before leaving, and on the very last time you guys were there, I was able to wait on your table again. Your mother smiled at me when she got up to leave and she told me something that I never forgot—something that changed my life forever.”
“What was it?”
“She said I hope you make something of your life Frank Bastian and then she slipped me another large tip and left.”
“Paula gave you another five hundred dollars?” Adam asked him.
“No,” he answered. “That time she gave me five thousand.”
Wow.
“After that, I bought myself a new pair of shoes, started saving all of my money instead of using it to buy alcohol, and got myself an apartment. I went to night school and became a security guard. Paula was the one person in the world who made me feel like I wasn’t invisible and inspired me to build a life for myself. Yeah, I know that being a security guard might not be someone’s highest ambition. But I have my own place, and I’m on time with all of my bills. I’ve never had to be homeless again thanks to Lisette’s mom. If it hadn’t been for her, I would still be a homeless drunk, or maybe even dead by now.”
That was quite a moving story, and come to think of it, I did kind of remember trips to New York state as a kid. I think I even remembered the seafood restaurant that he was talking about if I really thought hard about it.
“So, you see,” Frank continued, “your mother saved my life. If I can help save yours, then I will have repaid that kindness and I can feel good about that.”
“Thank you,” I said as I walked forward and reached out my hand toward him.
“Don’t tell me that you’re really falling for this guy’s story,” Rob said.
“Yeah, I am. I believe him.”
I didn’t need to see in the dimness of the night to know that Rob was likely shaking his head at me. It didn’t matter. I believed Frank. I think that Michael and Adam might have believed him too. They knew my mom, and they knew his story sounded exactly like something that she would have done.
“How can you help us?” Michael asked him.
“I have a friend that works at border patrol,” he said. “A good friend—one that owes me a favor which would probably be able to get you all across the border.”
We all exchanged glances. That was exactly what we needed right now.
“I don’t trust him,” Rob said again.
“We know,” I said gruffly. “But really, we don’t have much of a choice anyway, do we? It doesn’t matter whether you trust him or not. It’s the best chance we have.”
