Free.
Then again.
By the fourth time, I stopped her before she could run back outside.
“Why does this man keep giving you free ice cream?” IceCream & Frozen Desserts
Ellie gave me the enormous shrug children use when they don’t think something is important.
Then she said:
“He says strawberry was your favorite too.”
I stopped washing the dish in my hand.
“My favorite?”
“Yeah.”
She was already watching the street, worried the truck might leave.
“He said you always picked this one when you were little.”
A strange chill moved through me.
Because he was right.
Strawberry shortcake had been my favorite.
Not occasionally.
Every single time.
Other kids loved rocket pops, drumsticks, and those character ice creams with gumball eyes. ChildCare
Not me.
I always chose strawberry shortcake.
From the time my mother had to lift me high enough to reach the truck window until I was old enough to walk there myself with quarters in my pocket.
But that childhood had happened thirty years earlier.
Four hundred miles away.
In Millbrook, the town where I grew up and left when I turned eighteen.
There was absolutely no reason an ice cream truck driver in my current neighborhood should know any of that.
I tried to find the obvious explanation.
“Ellie, did you tell him my name?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him strawberry shortcake used to be my favorite?”
“No.”
She looked genuinely confused.
“I didn’t tell him anything about you. He just knew.” Dictionaries& Encyclopedias
That sentence bothered me.
He just knew.
So the following evening, when the faint music of the truck floated down our street, I went outside with Ellie.
The truck was parked near the corner.
Children crowded around it.
Bikes had been abandoned in driveways and on lawns.
The evening sunlight came through the trees in that beautiful golden way summer light sometimes does.
