Chapter 2: Hello — A Trucker's Long-Distance Love Story

Five years before she told him no, Elena Marín sent Daniel Mercer a smiley face.

She did not know his middle name.

She did not know how he took his coffee, how many hours he could drive before his voice changed from tired to irritable, or that he would someday know the exact amount of her rent without needing to ask.

She did not know that he hated uncertainty.

She did not know that he would learn the names of people in her family, remember the dates of her factory shifts, worry about her son, pay bills she could not pay, ask questions she did not want to answer, and eventually become so entangled in her life that removing him would feel less like ending a relationship than pulling wiring out of a wall.

She knew only that he had written to her.

And that he seemed harmless enough.

Hello :)

Elena sent the message at twelve-oh-three on a Wednesday afternoon while sitting sideways at the edge of her bed, one bare foot touching the cold tile.

The apartment was quiet except for the television in the other room and the occasional plastic clatter of Mateo moving something he had been specifically told not to move.

He was almost two.

Almost two meant old enough to reach everything and young enough to understand nothing.

"Mateo."

Silence.

That was worse.

Elena stood.

"Mateo."

A tiny head appeared around the doorway.

He smiled.

There was something blue in his hand.

She narrowed her eyes.

"What is that?"

His smile widened.

He ran.

Elena sighed and followed him.

By the time she returned to the bedroom, the stranger had answered.

His Spanish was slightly wrong.

Not incomprehensible.

Just arranged in a way that told her immediately that Spanish did not belong naturally inside his mouth.

She smiled.

Foreigners always tried too hard with verbs.

She answered.

A few minutes later he asked how she was.

Nothing unusual.

She had conversations like this before. Facebook made everyone feel as though a person appearing on a screen had somehow already been introduced.

People knew people.

Someone had seen someone in a photograph.

A coworker had a cousin.

A friend knew an American.

Santa Paloma was a border city. The line between stranger and acquaintance was often nothing more than one tagged photograph.

Elena looked at his profile again.

Older.

Gray hair.

Not ugly.

Short, perhaps. Hard to tell.

Truck driver, apparently.

American.

He sent a photograph from wherever he was.

Then a location.

Some enormous technology facility in Texas.

Elena zoomed in on the photograph.

His truck looked absurdly large.

She imagined him sitting inside it sending messages while someone somewhere waited for whatever he was delivering.

"What are you doing?" she typed.

He told her.

Electronics.

A data center.

He joked.

Then mentioned that he hoped water was not leaking into his apartment while he was gone because of the weather.

That made Elena laugh.

He could be hundreds of kilometers from home and still be thinking about a roof.

Very adult problem.

Very unromantic.

She liked that.

People online usually tried to look more interesting than they were.

They photographed drinks they didn't normally order.

Cars that didn't belong to them.

Restaurants they could barely afford.

Bodies positioned at angles no person naturally stood in.

This man was talking about a possible leak.

Daniel asked what she did for work.

Then, almost as if embarrassed by asking, he volunteered information about himself.

He drove a truck in the United States.

He described himself as short, old and gray.

Elena laughed out loud.

Mateo looked up from the floor.

"What?"

He returned to pushing a toy beneath the sofa.

Elena typed back that she worked in a factory.

Twelve-hour shifts.

Weekends.

The stranger immediately began asking questions.

What schedule?

What did she do?

Three days on, four days off?

Was she on the line?

Had she been there long?

Elena answered because, for the moment, it amused her.

Three days working.

Four days free.

Not bad if a person ignored the part where the three working days took almost everything out of her.

Daniel told her his routes brought him through Santa Paloma several days each month.

That made her look at the screen a little differently.

He wasn't simply some American on the other side of a phone.

He came here.

Not today.

Not necessarily soon.

But he existed inside the same geography.

He had family in Houston, he said. His children were older. One daughter was twenty-two. Twins were fifteen.

Elena paused.

Three daughters.

That softened something.

Men with daughters sometimes understood women better.

Sometimes.

She had learned not to make rules about men.

"I have a baby almost two," she wrote.

Daniel responded almost immediately.

Questions again.

Always questions.

She sent a photograph.

Mateo beautiful, of course.

He was always beautiful.

Even with food dried on his shirt.

Even when his hair refused to lie down.

Even when he was furious because Elena had removed an object from his hand that he absolutely intended to swallow.

Daniel complimented him.

Then complimented Elena.

She smiled despite herself.

Nothing dramatic.

She was used to men calling her pretty.

She knew what she looked like.

But Daniel's compliments felt strangely awkward, as if he had decided honesty required saying whatever entered his head and had not yet learned which thoughts were supposed to remain there.

Elena studied the photograph he had sent.

Gray hair.

Beard.

Older than her by a lot.

Forty-seven, according to his profile.

He didn't look forty-seven.

She told him.

You don't look forty-seven. You look younger.

That pleased him more than she expected.

He complained that shaving or cutting his hair made him look older.

Elena looked again.

"No," she wrote. "It suits you."

That could have been the end of it.

A harmless conversation.

An American truck driver.

A Mexican factory worker.

Children.

Work.

Weather.

A little flirting.

Instead Daniel asked a question that should have been too personal.

"Can I ask if Mateo's father is active in his life?"

Elena stared at the screen.

There it was.

Most men eventually reached the question.

Where is the father?

What happened?

Are you alone?

Is he jealous?

Will there be problems?

Men asked about single mothers as though buying property with an unresolved lien.

She considered not answering.

Then another message appeared.

"You don't have to answer."

That helped.

She typed.

Mateo's father helped with some of his expenses. His family took Mateo on the weekends Elena worked.

Daniel responded with surprising enthusiasm.

Good.

Excellent.

He seemed almost relieved.

Elena frowned slightly.

What had he expected?

She explained.

The relationship between her and Mateo's father had ended.

His relationship with his son had not.

Those were separate things.

Adults could fail each other without requiring children to pay for it.

Daniel sent a symbol of raised hands.

Then began explaining his own experience.

Of course he did.

Elena smiled.

He had stories for everything.

His children's mother.

Other women he had known.

Parents who disappeared.

People who used children against each other.

He wrote more than anyone Elena had spoken to in months.

Possibly years.

The messages kept arriving.

Elena sat back against the headboard.

He wasn't boring.

That was something.

A little much.

But not boring.

He explained that he and the mother of his children remained friends because children were not responsible for adult problems.

Elena agreed.

Finally, a subject she had opinions about.

She typed faster.

People used children as weapons when relationships ended. It made no sense. If a relationship had honestly been tried and failed, then the adults should accept that and keep the child out of the fight.

Mateo was happy with her.

He was happy with his father.

That was what mattered.

Daniel answered immediately.

He agreed.

The child had both parents active in his life. That was best.

Elena looked toward the living room.

Mateo had managed to pull one cushion off the sofa and was trying to climb on top of it.

She smiled.

Whatever else failed, she had gotten that part right.

What she did not notice yet was that Daniel had already separated Mateo from the category of obstacle.

He was not asking whether the boy would complicate Elena.

He was asking about the boy himself.

That difference would matter later.

For now, it merely made the conversation easier.

Her phone vibrated again.

Daniel apologized for his translation.

If something didn't make sense, he said, she should tell him.

Google didn't always translate correctly from English into "Mexican."

Elena laughed so loudly Mateo looked at her.

"Mexican?"

She typed that she could understand him.

Mostly.

It was strange how quickly talking to him became easy.

Not intimate.

Not yet.

Easy.

There was a difference.

He asked about her work again.

What position did she have?

Was she in an office or on the assembly line?

Elena corrected him.

Universal operator.

She was responsible for a line.

Actually, she could run two lines because she knew the different models.

There.

She waited.

That was something she was proud of.

Seven months.

Already responsible for more than people who had been there longer.

She expected a polite response.

Instead Daniel seemed genuinely impressed.

He asked questions about the production line.

He understood factories.

His work took him to them constantly.

For once she did not have to explain what a model change meant or why knowing two lines mattered.

He understood enough to understand that she had moved quickly.

Elena sat a little straighter.

She told him she wanted to move into the laboratory eventually.

"Seven months and already responsible for the line," she typed. "I must be doing something right."

The response came quickly.

Obviously.

Elena smiled.

There were compliments about beauty that disappeared as soon as the screen went dark.

This one stayed with her a little longer.

He had listened.

That mattered.

She liked work.

Not every job.

Not every supervisor.

Not every shift.

Certainly not standing for twelve hours when her feet hurt and she wanted to be home.

But she liked being good at things.

There was satisfaction in knowing a process so well that other people came to her when it stopped working.

Machines were easier than people.

Machines failed for reasons.

A sensor.

A setting.

A part.

Material.

Temperature.

Something.

Find the cause and the line moved again.

People could stop working for reasons they did not understand themselves.

Her phone vibrated.

Daniel had sent a video.

Something related to the factory.

Then he mentioned he had once worked twelve-hour shifts himself.

Monday through Thursday.

Three days off.

She could picture it.

He seemed like someone who enjoyed telling people he could handle difficult schedules.

Probably enjoyed difficulty in general.

Some men needed things to be hard in order to believe they were worthwhile.

Elena didn't know him well enough to decide whether that was true.

Not yet.

She looked through his photographs again.

One caught her attention.

A woman she recognized.

Isabel.

Elena hesitated.

Then asked.

"Your ex is Isabel, right?"

His reaction came almost instantly.

Yes.

Then:

"Do you know her?"

Elena laughed.

Of course this would become complicated.

Santa Paloma was not small enough that everyone knew everyone, but apparently it was small enough that an American stranger could have an ex in Elena's orbit.

She explained that she had seen Isabel occasionally.

Not close.

Not a friend.

Just familiar.

Daniel immediately wanted to know how Elena had figured it out.

She apologized.

Maybe she should not have brought it up.

He said it was fine.

Then it wasn't fine.

The conversation shifted.

Daniel began explaining.

Isabel had said things about him.

There had been problems.

Threats.

Missing belongings.

Evidence.

An attorney.

A stolen phone.

Police.

Serial numbers.

WhatsApp conversations saved.

Elena's eyebrows rose higher with each message.

"What is wrong with your life?" she finally wrote.

Then corrected herself with another message.

"Seriously."

This man had appeared less than two hours ago and was already telling her about lawyers and property disputes.

Elena should have stopped replying.

Instead she became curious.

That was her problem sometimes.

Not trust.

Curiosity.

Trust required time.

Curiosity required only that the story become interesting enough.

She told him that if he really had evidence, he could take legal action.

Daniel told her he had.

Of course he had.

He had a lawyer.

Documents.

Photographs.

Records.

Proof.

Elena noticed the word.

Evidence.

He liked evidence.

She didn't think anything of it then.

Why would she?

People with problems needed evidence.

He told her that he had learned to keep distance from the situation and let the attorney manage it.

That sounded reasonable.

Then, almost abruptly, he wrote:

"My name is Daniel Mercer, if Facebook hasn't shown you already."

Elena laughed.

Two hours of conversation.

Children.

Work.

Exes.

Lawyers.

And now introductions.

She typed that yes, she had already seen his name.

Then apologized for disappearing.

She had been eating breakfast.

Breakfast at two in the afternoon.

She looked at the plate beside her.

Day-off rules.

Daniel replied:

"No problem. You have a life to live. I'm only a visitor."

Elena stopped.

Only a visitor.

That was a strange way to say it.

She read it twice.

There was something lonely in the sentence, although perhaps she was imagining it.

She typed a laughing face.

Then decided she had heard enough about his ex.

"Leaving your ex aside," she wrote, "what can you tell me about yourself?"

She expected a paragraph.

She underestimated him.

Daniel began with trucking.

Fifteen years.

Twenty years married.

Five divorced.

Houston.

Santa Paloma.

Degrees.

Business.

Electrical engineering.

Nursing.

Elena blinked.

Nursing?

Truck driver.

Electrical engineering.

Business.

Nursing.

She wondered whether Americans simply collected careers.

The messages kept coming.

He did not smoke.

No drugs.

Rarely drank.

Liked landscapes.

Honesty.

Integrity.

Work ethic.

Structure.

Routine.

Clean homes.

Children with manners.

Schedules.

Communication.

The phone vibrated.

And vibrated again.

And again.

Elena sat cross-legged on the bed.

"Oh my God," she whispered, smiling.

Mateo wandered into the room and attempted to climb onto the mattress.

She lifted him with one arm while reading with the other.

Daniel believed children should have routines.

Daniel believed couples should say good morning and good night.

Daniel liked physical affection.

Daniel valued intimacy.

Daniel was apparently very sexual.

Elena's eyebrows rose.

That information had arrived sooner than necessary.

She kept reading.

Daniel would change his hair or clothes if a woman he loved preferred something else.

He had lost weight.

He exercised.

He was social.

He helped people.

He held people to their promises.

Do not promise what you cannot deliver.

Elena slowed at that one.

Then another message appeared.

He wanted to be happy with someone and not have to do life alone.

That one was different.

Less résumé.

More person.

She looked at Mateo, who had discovered the corner of her pillow and was rubbing it between two fingers as if evaluating fabric quality.

Daniel kept going.

He believed love was shown through actions.

Actions told him whether someone loved him.

Then, finally:

"Sorry. I'll stop now."

Elena laughed.

"Wow."

She sent it before deciding whether it sounded rude.

Then:

"You really are interesting."

It was true.

Maybe exhausting.

Definitely interesting.

Daniel had just explained more about himself in fifteen minutes than some men revealed in six months.

There was something almost reckless about it.

No mystery.

No careful performance.

Just an open drawer dumped onto the table.

Elena found herself looking through it.

There was no strategy she could detect.

Daniel did not seem to know how to ration attention.

If someone mattered to him, even slightly, he leaned toward them instead of away.

He asked.

He remembered.

He offered pieces of himself before deciding whether it was wise.

To Elena, who was used to people protecting themselves with indifference, it was almost disarming.

She told him about herself.

Twenty-four.

Mateo almost two.

A six-year relationship behind her.

She had lived in Mazatlán.

Three years back in Santa Paloma.

She had started studying systems engineering but never finished.

She had worked four years at a convenience store chain.

Cashier.

Supervisor.

Store leader.

She tended to move up wherever she worked.

That mattered to her.

She liked working.

She liked earning what she had.

She liked making sure Mateo never went without.

There.

Her life in a few lines.

Daniel immediately returned to relationships.

Communication was everything, he said.

So much communication that other people might think it excessive.

Elena smiled.

That certainly appeared to be true.

He said he was physical.

Emotional.

Intimate.

He described relationships almost as though explaining a household operating procedure.

Children had their own rooms.

Couples slept together when both were home.

Good morning.

Good night.

Don't neglect children.

Don't neglect each other.

Elena read the messages with increasing amusement.

He had thought about all of this.

Not vaguely.

Specifically.

She imagined him somewhere in Texas, inside an enormous truck, sending a twenty-four-year-old woman in Mexico the constitutional framework for a relationship neither of them had proposed.

It should have seemed strange.

It did seem strange.

But it was also funny.

She liked details, she told him.

Flowers.

Chocolate.

Even a lollipop.

Anything.

Small things counted.

Daniel admitted he was not naturally good at those things.

His marriage had not trained him for them.

He would try.

That answer pleased her.

She told him she didn't care much about brand-name clothes.

She didn't earn millions.

She dressed fine.

She liked good sneakers.

Converse.

That was about it.

Mostly she cared that Mateo looked good.

Clean.

Dressed nicely.

Always.

Daniel agreed enthusiastically.

Children first.

Again, something aligned.

That surprised Elena.

There was nearly a generation between them.

Different country.

Different language.

Different work.

Different life.

And yet certain things required no translation.

Children came first.

Work mattered.

Cleanliness mattered.

Honesty mattered.

People should do what they said.

Elena didn't realize yet how differently two people could define that last sentence.

For the moment it was simply something they shared.

Mateo climbed off the bed.

Elena checked the time.

She had spent almost four hours talking to a stranger.

Not continuously.

Breakfast.

Mateo.

Cleaning.

Messages between things.

Still.

Four hours.

She scrolled upward.

The conversation already looked oddly long.

He had asked more questions in one afternoon than some people asked in a year.

She had answered most of them.

Why?

She didn't know.

Maybe because he wasn't pretending not to care.

People often performed indifference when meeting someone new.

Don't answer too quickly.

Don't ask too much.

Don't show interest.

Wait.

Make them wonder.

Daniel apparently had never received those instructions.

He responded when he wanted.

Asked when he wanted to know something.

Explained himself when nobody had requested an explanation.

Sent photographs.

Sent locations.

Sent parts of his life without understanding they might be valuable.

If he was playing a game, he was terrible at it.

She found that refreshing.

Her phone vibrated again.

Another question.

Of course.

She shook her head and smiled.

"Do you ever stop asking things?"

She almost sent it.

Instead she answered.

The conversation continued into the afternoon.

Music.

Food.

Work.

Children.

Santa Paloma.

Houston.

Things he liked.

Things she liked.

There were translation mistakes.

One was so bad Elena had to read it aloud before understanding what he meant.

She corrected him.

Daniel blamed Google.

She teased him about speaking "Mexican."

He defended himself badly.

She laughed.

The ease surprised her.

Not because Daniel was especially smooth.

He wasn't.

That might have been the reason.

He had no ability to make the conversation look effortless because he was visibly putting effort into all of it.

Even his mistakes arrived earnestly.

At one point Daniel sent a compliment that translated into something far more intense than he probably intended.

Elena stared at it.

Then sent:

"Jajaja."

Daniel realized something had gone wrong.

A correction arrived.

Then another.

Elena laughed harder.

Mateo looked up again.

"He's funny," she told him.

Mateo did not care.

He had found a spoon.

Late afternoon light began turning the apartment warmer.

Elena went to the kitchen and filled a cup with water.

Her phone followed her.

It had already become that kind of conversation.

Not important enough to stop life for.

Interesting enough to carry from room to room.

Daniel was somewhere else doing the same.

That thought felt unexpectedly intimate.

Two people continuing ordinary lives while a conversation ran between them like a thin wire.

She imagined his truck.

She had never been inside one of the American trucks.

From the outside they looked like small buildings moving down the highway.

Maybe there was a bed behind the seats.

Probably storage.

Food.

Clothes.

A miniature life.

He lived in motion.

Elena couldn't imagine it.

She liked knowing where home was.

Even when home was messy.

Even when money was short.

Even when neighbors were loud.

Home was the place Mateo's shoes ended up in the wrong room.

The place she knew how much shampoo remained without looking.

The place where she could walk to the bathroom in the dark.

Daniel woke up in different places.

Maybe that was why he talked so much.

Maybe people became coordinates for him.

Something stable between cities.

Her phone buzzed.

She looked.

A photograph from the road.

She smiled.

"Pretty," she wrote.

It was not particularly pretty.

But she understood why he had sent it.

He wanted her to see what he could see.

That was different from telling her where he was.

She sent him a photograph back.

Nothing important.

Her day.

Her side.

He responded almost instantly.

For the first time all afternoon, Elena wondered whether he might actually like her.

Not simply talking.

Her.

She dismissed the thought.

Too soon.

Much too soon.

He was forty-seven.

She was twenty-four.

He lived in another country.

He drove through hers.

He had daughters.

She had Mateo.

He had an ex whose situation apparently required attorneys, police reports and evidence.

She had already survived one six-year relationship and had no desire to volunteer for unnecessary complications.

Daniel Mercer looked like unnecessary complications.

Interesting complications.

Still complications.

She put the phone down.

Mateo needed food.

Laundry needed to be folded.

There were dishes.

Real life reclaimed the room.

For almost twenty minutes Elena did not look at the screen.

When she returned, there were messages waiting.

Not angry.

Not asking where she had gone.

Just more conversation.

She answered one.

Ignored another.

Answered a third.

Daniel did not complain.

That mattered more than Elena consciously noticed.

She had known men who believed a woman holding a phone owed them immediate access to her.

Daniel, at least today, did not.

He had already told her:

You have a life to live. I'm only a visitor.

She thought about that line again.

Only a visitor.

Maybe he understood.

Maybe that's exactly what he was.

Someone passing through.

A truck came through Santa Paloma.

A man passed through a conversation.

People entered.

People left.

Elena had become good at allowing both.

What she did not know was that Daniel was already beginning to do the opposite.

He did not collect people casually.

When someone interested him, he started making room.

A detail here.

A schedule there.

A child's name.

A workplace.

A city.

Nothing dramatic.

Nothing he would have called attachment.

Just small pieces of another person's life being stored where he could find them again.

Her phone vibrated.

Daniel asked something about her plans for work.

She told him about the laboratory.

The degree she hadn't finished.

Systems engineering.

Maybe someday she would go back.

Maybe not.

Life did not always follow the order a person expected.

At eighteen she had probably imagined twenty-four differently.

Degree.

Career.

Maybe marriage.

Instead:

Factory.

Mateo.

A relationship ended.

Bills.

Three twelve-hour shifts.

Four days to make the rest of life fit.

It wasn't terrible.

It was hers.

That mattered.

Daniel told her she seemed ambitious.

Elena liked that word.

Not beautiful.

Not sexy.

Ambitious.

She answered with a simple smile.

By evening the conversation had become less like an introduction and more like a room they were both wandering around inside.

Neither had announced they intended to stay.

Still neither left.

Daniel asked questions.

Elena answered.

Elena asked one.

Daniel answered ten.

Sometimes she disappeared to do something.

When she returned, he was still there.

He told her about his daughters.

He was proud of them.

That came through even when the translation did not.

Elena liked that too.

A man could tell stories about himself in many ways.

The way he talked about his children said more than the degrees and the years driving and the declarations about honesty.

He asked about Mateo again.

Not whether Mateo's father would be a problem.

About Mateo.

What he liked.

What he did.

Elena found herself answering.

At some point she sent another photograph.

Mateo looking impossibly small.

Daniel responded with affection that did not seem performed.

Elena placed the phone against her chest for a second.

Not because she was falling in love.

She would have laughed at anyone who suggested that.

She didn't know the man.

But something had happened.

Something tiny.

She had stopped categorizing him as a stranger.

There should have been a word for the stage immediately after stranger.

Not friend.

Not anything important.

Simply:

someone you would notice if they stopped writing.

Daniel had probably reached that place first.

Elena did not know it, but somewhere on a Texas highway a man who had met her only hours earlier had already begun arranging small pieces of his attention around her.

Not love.

Nothing close to love.

Just the first movement toward caring whether she appeared again tomorrow.

The sky outside darkened.

Elena turned on a light.

Mateo had finally begun to slow down.

Soon bath.

Pajamas.

Sleep, hopefully.

Then quiet.

Her phone lit again.

Daniel.

She answered.

There was no reason not to.

* * *

Later, lying beside Mateo while waiting for him to fall asleep, Elena reread parts of the conversation.

Not all of it.

There was already too much.

She found the part where Daniel described himself as an old, short man with gray hair.

Smiled.

The part where she had told him he didn't look forty-seven.

That he looked younger.

She smiled again.

Then the part where he said communication mattered almost to the point of excess.

She raised an eyebrow.

At least he had warned her.

Then the part about promises.

Don't promise what you cannot deliver.

She stopped there.

Not because it frightened her.

It didn't.

If anything, she agreed.

People should do what they said.

Simple.

Then:

Love is shown through actions.

She read that one twice.

There was something solid about it.

Words were easy.

Anyone could say anything.

Actions mattered.

Elena believed that too.

At twenty-four, lying beside her sleeping son, she had no reason to wonder whether two people could believe exactly the same sentence and mean completely different things by it.

Daniel believed love was proven through action.

Elena believed love could be seen in actions too.

That looked like agreement.

For now, it was.

She scrolled farther up.

His photograph.

Gray hair.

She enlarged it again.

Forty-seven.

She still didn't believe it.

She smiled.

Then closed the image.

Mateo shifted beside her.

Elena lowered the brightness on the phone.

Another message arrived.

Daniel.

She should sleep.

She opened it anyway.

Nothing important.

Something about his drive.

She answered.

A few minutes passed.

Another.

She answered that too.

The conversation would continue tomorrow.

She assumed.

There was no reason to think otherwise.

No reason to imagine thousands of messages.

No reason to imagine money.

Hotels.

Therapy.

Arguments.

Marriage.

A beach.

No reason to imagine a man five years older than this moment sitting alone in a truck, scrolling backward through their entire history trying to understand where everything changed.

And no reason to imagine that, even after all of it, he would still want the woman from this first day badly enough to choose the whole road again if it ended with her.

None of that existed yet.

There was only a phone glowing softly in a dark room.

A sleeping child.

A stranger on a highway.

And Elena, smiling at something he had written.

Earlier that afternoon she had sent him one word.

Hello :)

She had meant nothing by it.

Not yet.