Mrs. Grant reached into her purse and took out the folded card with the DDOT logo on the front, and she folded her hands first, slow, and looked at her son like he was twelve years old again.
Tyler, she said. Be quiet now and listen to your mother.
She read the card. In November 2023, on the Lodge Freeway, a man had a seizure in the back of a city bus, and the driver pulled over safe, kept thirty passengers calm, and knelt on the floor holding that mans head off the hard rubber until EMS arrived. The transit authority had commended her for it.
Then Mrs. Grant set the card down. That man on the floor of her bus was your father, Tyler. My husband. He was coming home from his shift. The woman you just said should be an influencer knelt on a dirty bus floor for twenty minutes and kept your daddy from cracking his skull open, and she did not even know whose husband he was. She just did it because that is who she is.
Tyler had brought his own almond milk and mocked the woman who drives the people who could not afford a car, never knowing his own father had been one of them that night.
The peach cobbler sat there steaming. Tyler did not have a word to say.
I am Jasmines father, and I will tell you I had to put my fork down to keep my hands still. My daughter went to college and drives Route 16 through Dexter and holds this city together one stop at a time, and she passed the mac and cheese and said okay, Tyler, and let him run his mouth. His own mama set it straight. Mrs. Grant drove back to Flint that night, but before she left she took Jasmines face in her hands and called her a good woman, and that was worth more than the whole dinner.