He got an immediate reply. New phone, who dis?
“Very funny,” he muttered, and put in the video call.
Amy’s face suddenly appeared on his screen. She’d piled her red hair on top of her head and had tied a colorful scarf around it. She’d changed her nose ring to gold, he noticed, probably in honor of the holiday season, and of course she was wearing glasses that looked like two candy canes had been welded together. “Whose number is this?”
“A stranger’s. That’s why I’m calling. I need you to do me a favor,” Jonah said as he strode in the direction of baggage claim.
“Sure, Joe. I’m already doing you a huge favor and working your shifts over the holidays. What’s one more?”
“Aww, so sorry that you have to make an occasional cup of coffee for double pay this week. Anyway, this is a tiny favor. Just text my parents and my aunt and uncle and tell them I lost my phone and someone else has it, so don’t text me.”
“But who has it?”
“A woman. There was a mix-up in the ride share to the airport.”
Amy frowned with suspicion. “I don’t get it. How do you mix up a phone on a ride share?”
“You just can and I did.” He jogged down the escalator, squeezing past travelers who stood in the middle of the stairs with their bags.
“But how are you going to get it back? What about your contacts? And your photos?” She suddenly gasped. “What about your banking app?”
Why had he called Amy, again? She’d been working at the family business for so long that she was like a kid sister to him and acted like it. “When I get back to Austin, I’ll meet up with her and we’ll exchange phones. She can’t get into my banking app because it needs my face. Anyway, please don’t blow up my phone while I’m gone because I won’t be the one to see what a nerd you are. And tell Mom and Dad and Marty and Belinda.”
Amy snorted. “You think they’re going to remember not to text or call you on your number? Here, you tell them.”
She swung her phone around so that Jonah could see his mom and dad and Aunt Belinda and Uncle Marty sitting around a table in a private dining room. There was a half-completed jigsaw puzzle in the middle of the table. Some empty dishes were stacked in the corners, a few books in front of his dad, and Aunt Belinda was knitting. Behind them, through the open doorway, Jonah could see some of the regular patrons of the Lucky Star, and the top of the cook’s head, wrapped in a red bandanna, behind the counter.
“Hi, Joe!” his parents and aunt and uncle shouted. They were drinking beer and wine, and Jonah watched as a man suddenly appeared in view with two pizza boxes. “Pizza’s here,” he announced.
“Thanks, Kev!” Amy said.
Hadn’t he talked to them about bringing in food from competitors? Why, yes—yes, he had, and on more than one occasion. “Why let customers know there is a better place down the street?” he’d demanded of the four of them.
“It’s good pizza,” Uncle Marty had said.
“Joe lost his phone,” Amy announced as the pizza delivery guy went out.
“What?” Aunt Belinda exclaimed. “Then how is he calling you?” Uncle Marty took charge of carefully laying the pizza boxes on top of the puzzle.
“He mixed up his phone with someone else’s, and he is using that phone to call.”
“Why didn’t he just give it back?” Jonah’s dad asked.
“He won’t say,” Amy said. “He’s being kind of secretive about it.”
“I’m not being secretive!” Jonah shouted so that the four seniors would hear him. That was Amy for you, always tossing a little Tabasco into any situation. The seniors didn’t hear him, because they were discussing how annoying it would be to lose a phone as they grabbed for slices of pizza. “Mom! Dad!” They were not listening to him. Typical. “Amy? Can you help here?”
“Joe, honey, how did you lose your phone?” his mother asked.
“It’s a long story, Mom. I don’t have time to get into it right now.”
“Why? Are you in a big rush to go caroling?” Amy asked.
Everyone in the store laughed. Everyone, including Robert and Lloyd, the two old guys in Marine ball caps sitting next to the enormous Christmas tree. And the six members of the Little Stacy Neighborhood Book Club, who met every third week to discuss books, and then every other week to discuss their kids and husbands and crafts. They were having their holiday party under the string of oversized ornaments Aunt Belinda had made Uncle Marty hang across the ceiling. Jonah could even hear Bing Crosby crooning in the background, Ho Ho Ho-ing along with the chorus.
In the corner of the dining room, standing sentry, was the life-size cutout of Roy Rogers, his father’s namesake. That cutout had been there longer than Jonah had been alive. He’d been refurbished a time or two in the last thirty years, but he was always there, wearing something indicative of the season. Today, he was wearing a Santa hat over the crown of his cowboy hat, and someone had wrapped a garland around his neck.
This was the Lucky Star Coffee Shop. His family’s business. Correction—his family’s failing business, the one that was leaking money. Which reminded him, and he asked hopefully of Amy, “Hey, did you sell any of the Christmas trees?”
“Are you kidding? In this rain? No one is hauling a tree in this rain.”
He glanced down the pickup lane, looking for his cousin’s vehicle. “They’re small trees. Tabletop trees. People should be able to carry them. That was the whole point.”
“I’m just saying, no one is buying trees in this weather.”
They hadn’t bought the trees in any weather. Jonah didn’t get it. Didn’t millennials put up trees? He’d had the brilliant idea that they’d stop in for a tree and stay for a burger or a coffee. But they didn’t.
A familiar black SUV made the curve in the road and flashed lights at him.
“Listen, Allen and Andy are here. Merry Christmas, squirt. And remember—don’t blow up my phone. Promise me you’ll make sure my family understands that.”
“Have fun, Joe!” his mother called from somewhere behind Amy.
“I’m not blowing up anything. Bye, stupid,” Amy said, and clicked off.
The SUV pulled to a halt beside the curb, and the back door popped open. Jonah tossed his suitcase inside and followed with his body. A male voice from the front demanded, “Dude . . . why aren’t you answering your texts?”
He wasn’t sure which twin had asked that, Allen or Andy. His cousins were identical in appearance. They were both doctors—Andy a pediatrician, Allen a gynecologist—and they were so stinking good-looking that any man who went along as their third wheel was going to get some residual attention from women. Jonah had always enjoyed that perk of being their cousin.