Page 80 of Here We Go Again

I’ve been waiting for you, Remy had said. Logan wonders what would have happened if those had been her first words to Rosemary when she moved back to Vista Summit. That day in August when she found out about Rosemary’s return during teacher training days, when Rosemary was standing in the library with the other new staff members, wearing a polka-dot dress.I’ve been waiting for you.

What if she’d admitted that she’d looked for Rosemary during every holiday in college, at the Safeway and at Rochelle’s, every blond head on Main Street belonging to her?

“Can we please just go?” Joe asks.

“Sure, Joe,” Rosemary coos. “We can go.”

“Let me cool down the van first.” Logan jogs around to the driver’s side and climbs into the sweat sauna, but when she turns the key in the ignition, nothing happens.

“Joe!” a voice calls from down the street. Logan doesn’t need to look up through the windshield to know it’s Remy. She tries to start the car again, and again, nothing.

“Joe! Wait!” Remy reaches them on the sidewalk, and Logan feels a deep emotional pull to watch this. She gets out of the van.

“You’re really leaving?” Remy seems nonplussed by the thirty-two-year-old woman practically in Joe’s lap, but Rosemary still scrambles into a standing position.

“Yes,” Joe manages with snot all down his face. “We have plans.”

“We don’t have any plans,” Logan corrects. Remy turns to face her for the first time, and the sincerity of those dark brown eyes is paralyzing.

“I’m Remy St. Patin.” He outstretches his hand.

“Logan.”

Remy squints at her like he’s trying to find an answer in her face. “His… daughter?”

“Holland fucking Taylor,no. His former student.”

Remy seems to find this even more troubling.

“We both are,” Rosemary blurts. “Hi, I’m Rosemary.”

“Hi, Rosemary.”

Joe sits there in a disheartened pile of his own sweat and tears, but when Remy looks down at him, it’s clear that he still sees the Joe from the painting.

“Were you really in the area?” Remy asks him.

Joe sniffles. “Sort of. We were in Albuquerque.”

“Oh, so only twelve-hundred miles away. Practically just around the corner,” Remy teases. “What were you doing in Albuquerque?”

Joe can’t find the right lie, so Logan answers. “We’re on a death road trip, driving Joe from Washington to Maine.”

“Washington to Maine… and you’re now on the Gulf Coast?”

Rosemary shifts awkwardly in her sweat-stained dress. “We’re sort of just letting the journey tell us where we need to go.”

“And you needed to come here.”

It’s not a question. It’s a statement of incontrovertible fact, delivered in Remy’s calm, confident voice.

“And who’s this?” Remy asks when Odie begins vigorously licking his crotch. He bends down to scratch Odie’s ears, and now everyone is under the spell of Remy’s charm.

“This is Odysseus. My cancer dog.”

“Cancer.” Remy is now at eye level with Joe. “Where?”

“Everywhere, now. It started in my pancreas.”