Chapter 6 - The Depot That Remembered My Name
The next morning, I went to the depot.
Not the corporate headquarters Gavin built with glass walls and his name in brushed steel.
The depot.
The old one outside Frederick, where vans still left before dawn and drivers drank terrible coffee from a machine older than my sons.
I had not been there in years.
I expected awkwardness.
I expected whispers.
I did not expect Lou Davis.
Lou was our first driver. He had white hair now, a bad knee, and the same denim jacket he wore the day I hired him.
He saw me step out of the car and shouted, “About damn time.”
Then he hugged me so hard I nearly lost my balance.
Drivers came out one by one.
Dispatchers.
Mechanics.
Schedulers.
People Gavin called “labor” in board meetings, though he smiled beside them for photographs.
They remembered.
Not all the legal details.
But they remembered me sleeping on the office couch during snowstorms because dialysis patients still needed rides.
They remembered me painting the first logo on the van door.
They remembered Gavin arriving later in polished shoes.
A dispatcher named June pulled an old binder from a cabinet.
“I kept the first route sheets,” she said. “Thought somebody might need proof someday.”
Inside were handwritten schedules.
My handwriting.
My notes.
My signature.
Patient names redacted.
Routes built before Gavin had a title.
Lou tapped the binder.
“He sold the story. You built the road.”
I cried then.
In front of twenty employees and a broken coffee machine.
Nobody looked away.
That afternoon, a photograph of me at the depot leaked online.
Not from me.
From one of the mechanics, who captioned it:
Founder came home.
By evening, the public story shifted.
Reporters began asking why Gavin had claimed sole founder status.
Former employees posted memories.
Old clients wrote about “Cassandra’s vans.”
A retired nurse shared that I once drove a patient myself at 4 a.m. during an ice storm.
Gavin had magazines.
I had witnesses.
May you like
There is a difference.
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