Page 17 of Here We Go Again

She tries drowning her feelings in a drink of coffee, but when it comes to accomplices in emotional subterfuge, coffee has nothing on whiskey. “Last night,” she starts, “Joe asked me to drive him to Bar Harbor.”

“Is that the new cowboy bar off highway 40?”

“Dad.”

Antonio puts his hands on his hips and cocks his head to the side. “Joe asked you to drive him to Bar Harbor, Maine?Why?”

She fights to keep the indifference in her voice and wins. “Apparently, he has a house there, and he wants to drive across the country so he can… uh, die… there.”

“And he asked you todrivehim? Does he need my airline miles?”

“I think the drive is part of it for him. He wants to have one last adventure.”

Her dad looks at her with such tenderness, it hurts somewhere in the back of her throat. “Sounds like someone else I know.”

Logan laughs like it’s funny. “I haven’t exactly lived a life of adventure.”

She used to dream of living one, though. She wanted to see the world and kept a list of all the most amazing-sounding places. The Andes Mountains of Peru, Patagonia, the Atacama Desert. Hike the Himalayas in Nepal and snorkel in Australia and see the Northern Lights in Iceland or Sweden or Svalbard. She wanted to climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow. Shewanted to buy a cabin in the woods or a little house on a lake and live among the trees.

Instead, she went to college fifteen minutes away at Washington State University’s Vancouver campus. She never moved out of her childhood bedroom, never got a passport, and never followed any rainbows. Now, all she sees is the distance between her dad’s house on Juniper Lane, and the high school on the other side of town. But at least there are mountains and streams and rainbows and so many damn trees right here.

And why would she waste her income on rent when her dad lives alone in a spacious house he’s already paid off and has two extra bedrooms? Aside from the obvious Shania Twain, dad thighs, needing to get-fingered-in-a-Kia-Sonata reasons.

“I think this road trip could actually be good for you,” her dad declares as he returns to his vat of crackling oil. He slides in his thermometer and studies it with his tongue poking out the left side of his mouth.

“I’m not going to do it.”

He gasps. “Why not? You have the whole summer off!”

“I can’t.”

“Youcan.”

She gives her dad her most withering, teenagery sigh. “He wants me and Hale to do it together. He wants both of us to drive him to Maine.”

Her dad winces as a splash of oil catches his arm while ladling in the bits of dough. “He wants you and Rosemary to drive him across the countrytogether? Doesn’t he realize you’ll all be dead before you reach the Idaho border?”

“I think the Oxy is turning his brain to mush. That’s why I said no.”

Her dad eyes her across the kitchen. “I’m sorry that Rosemary hurt you,” he says in his gentlest voice.

“I don’t care about Hale enough to be hurt by her.”

Her dad clucks as he begins fishing the now-cooked donuts out of the fryer. “I seem to remember some pretty big Rosemary-themed fits back in high school.” He takes on an unflattering mimicry. “Dad, Rosemary set the curve in chemistry, and I think she cheats. Dad, Rosemary poisoned my cookies. Dad, Rosemary tripped me in the cafeteria! Dad, Rosemary is still dating Jake McCandie!”

Logan holds up a single finger of protest. “While I can admit Rosemary never cheated on any test, she definitely put laxatives in those cookies. Why else would she have given me cookies at the state-qualifying debate tournament?”

“Because she was a sweet, socially misunderstood young woman?”

“It’s definitely not that.”

He waves his hand like he’s about to pull a rabbit out of the deep fryer. “And now all I ever hear is,Rosemary insulted me at a staff meeting, Rosemary thinks her job is more important than everyone else’s, Rosemary wears pantyhose.”

“Yes, well, I’m hoping she gets a yeast infection.”

“Do you remember when you girls used to play Barbies for hours?”

“It was middle school, Dad. We didn’t play Barbies. We dressed them up and wrote their character backstories.”