Page 19 of Here We Go Again

“I—I was hoping we could talk.” She winces at the hesitation in her voice. She hasn’t felt this nervous in front of Logan since she was eleven, since that first day when they sat next to each other on the bus, and Rosemary was certain that as soon as she opened her mouth, this cool, magnetic girl would get bored and choose someone else to ride next to every morning and afternoon.

“Please, Logan. We need to talk about Joe.”

Logan’s mouth twitches.

“Maybe I could come in—?” Rosemary tries, just as Antonio shouts from inside the house, “Alexa! Play Shania Twain, dammit!”

Alexa chirps, “Playing songs by Shania Twain,” before the song “You’re Still the One” blares through the house. Logan shouts over her shoulder, “Can you turn that down!” and it’s exactly the kind of chaos Rosemary remembers growing up in this house, back when she was invited to Maletis family dinners.

Antonio Maletis appears behind his daughter wearing an indecent feathery robe. “Who’s here?” he asks before he peers around Logan’s shoulder and smiles. “Well, if it isn’t Rosemary Hale!”

Logan mumbles in protest as her dad leans forward to kiss Rosemary on both cheeks. He smells like lavender face cream and honey. “It’s good to see you, Mr. Maletis,” she says politely, as if she didn’t duck behind a display of LaCroix when she saw him in the Safeway the other day.

“Were your ears burning, darling?” Antonio asks. “Because we were just talking about you.”

“All terrible things, I assume,” Rosemary says. Antonio laughs. Logan glowers.

“I’ve missed you, Rosemary,” he says wistfully.

“No, you haven’t,” Logan snaps.

“You look incredible,” Antonio continues, “please tell me your skin-care routine.”

“She feeds off the souls of children.”

“Surely not.” Hetsks.

“No, it’s just CeraVe.”

“You know, I just made loukoumades, so if you wanted to come inside and—”

Logan finally edges her dad out of the way, steps onto the porch, and closes the front door behind her. “Fine, Hale. Talk.”

Her mind flashes through all her arguments and talking points, but her mouth somehow supersedes all of her logic, cuts right to the quick of it before Logan can run away. “I think we should drive Joe to Maine.”

There’s a twitch in the corner of Logan’s mouth, but she covers it with a laugh. “Shit biscuits, how hard did I hit you with my car?”

“Is that an admission of fault?”

“Never.” Logan takes a few steps forward and slumps down onto the porch steps. “Hale, we can’t drive him.”

Rosemary carefully sits down a safe distance from her. “If you would just look at my binder—”

“I don’t need to look at your binder to know this is a terrible idea.”

“I don’t have terrible ideas.”

Logan shakes her head, and her frizzy brown curls bob and weave around her face. “You clearly haven’t thought this through.”

“I stayed up all night making a binder, so yes, I have.”

“We’d be in a car together for days. We’d have to stay in hotels together for a week!”

“Five nights.”

“What?”

Rosemary flips to the binder tab labeledItinerary. “I’ve charted a course that only takes six days, five nights, staying in cities that have good hospitals in case Joe needs medical attention. We stop in Twin Falls, Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Des Moines, Iowa; Cleveland, Ohio; and then Worcester, Massachusetts before finishing out the last stretch to Bar Harbor.”