MY DAUGHTER KEPT GETTING FREE ICE CREAM FROM THE SAME TRUCK — THEN THE DRIVER HANDED HER A NOTE AND SAID, “MAKE SURE YOUR MOM READS THIS.”
BY THE THIRD LINE OF THAT NOTE, MY HANDS WERE SHAKING — BECAUSE IT WAS SIGNED BY A MAN I’D BEEN TOLD DIED TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.
PART 1
My daughter kept getting free ice cream from the same truck — then the driver gave her a note and told her, “Make sure your mom reads this.”
For about two weeks, my nine-year-old daughter, Ellie, kept coming back inside with ice cream even though I knew she hadn’t taken any money with her.
My name is Sarah, and we live in a pretty normal suburban neighborhood in Cedar Hollow, Indiana, where an ice cream truck rolls through a few evenings a week during the summer.
The second Ellie hears the music, she’s usually at the front door asking for three dollars.
One afternoon, she came back holding a strawberry shortcake bar.
“I thought you didn’t have any allowance left.”
“I didn’t need it.”
“Why?”
“The man gave it to me.”
I assumed he was just being nice.
There were always a bunch of neighborhood kids around the truck, and maybe he’d had an extra one or something.
Then it happened again.
And again.
By the fourth time, I asked Ellie why this guy kept giving her free ice cream.
She shrugged.
“He says strawberry was your favorite too.”
I stopped what I was doing.
“My favorite?”
She nodded.
“He said you always got this one.”
That was strange, because strawberry shortcake bars actually were my favorite when I was a kid.
But I figured Ellie must have mentioned it somehow.
“Did you tell him my name?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him I used to eat those?”
“No.”
That bothered me enough that the next time I heard the truck, I went outside with her.
The driver was probably in his late fifties or early sixties.
Gray hair, baseball cap, glasses.
Just a regular older guy.
Ellie walked up to the window and he immediately said, “Hey, kiddo.”
Then he saw me standing behind her.
He just stared.
Not dramatically.
