Amy & Roger's Epic Detour

by Morgan Matson

  “But you’ve called her, right?”

  “I have—repeatedly. In the last message I left, I told her I was going to be in her neck of the woods. But she’s not calling me back.”

  “Maybe …,” I said slowly, trying to find the right words. “I mean, do you think it means something that she’s not calling you back?”

  “Of course it does,” he said. “I got that. But I just have to try. And if she doesn’t want to see me or talk to me, that’s fine. But at least I’ll have attempted it.”

  “You’re on your quest,” I said, thinking of Drew and what he’d said about Don Quixote.

  “Something like that, I guess,” said Roger. “I just really need some answers, that’s all.”

  “Mind if I ask some questions?” I asked. “Like, say, five?”

  Roger glanced over at me. “I had a feeling that was going to come back to haunt me,” he said. He sighed and turned down the music. “Fine. Shoot.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That counts as one, you know,” he said.

  “All right,” I said, realizing that I was going to have to be careful around him. And though I wanted to know more about Hadley, I also didn’t want to hear him talk about her. But I felt like we had gone looking for this girl, and the only impressions I had of her were from Drew and Bronwyn. I decided to go for it. If he could ask these questions, so could I. “Do you love her?”

  “Wow,” he said, glancing over at me. “Jump right in, why don’t you?”

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling like maybe I’d overstepped. “Was that too much?”

  “That makes three, you know,” Roger said. “No, it’s okay. I … hmm.” There was silence in the car for much longer than a normal pause. This one was at Harold Pinter levels. Amy! probably would have jumped in to fill the silence. Actually, Amy! most likely wouldn’t have asked the question in the first place. I pressed my fingernails into my palm to make myself wait for the answer. But Roger kept looking out the window, and after a few more moments, I couldn’t take it any more.

  “Roger?” I prompted.

  “That’s four,” he said. “You’re really not very good at this.”

  “I think you’re cheating,” I said, mostly just glad that the silence had been broken.

  “I’m just following your lead,” he said. “Do I love her? You’d think it would be an easier answer, right?”

  I was certainly not the person to ask this of. To ask of this. “I don’t know,” I said, careful not to let my inflection rise at the end of the sentence.

  He sighed, and changed lanes. “I thought I loved her,” he said. “If you’d asked me that a month ago, I would have said definitively yes. I even told her so.”

  “You did?”

  “And that’s five,” he said. “Yeah. Not one of the best moments of my life.” I wanted to ask why not, but I’d run out of questions. Roger glanced at me and must have realized this, because he smiled faintly and continued. “She didn’t say it back,” he said quietly.

  “Oh,” I said. Even though I’d never said it to anyone romantically, I could imagine that not hearing it back would feel pretty crushing.

  “Yeah,” Roger agreed. “She just smiled and kissed me, but didn’t say anything. And I think that’s when things started to change. I don’t know, maybe I freaked her out. Hadley wasn’t really one for big emotional displays. Maybe it was too much for her….” His voice trailed off, and I waited as long as I could before jumping in again.

  “One last one?” I asked.

  “Fine,” he said. “But I get a bonus question the next time it’s your turn.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked at him and tried to figure out how to phrase it. I just wasn’t sure that Roger had thought past our getting to Kentucky. I didn’t know if he’d thought about what it would actually be like once we arrived. Maybe it was the navigator’s job to think ahead, not the driver’s. But it still worried me. “What do you want to happen when we get there?”

  Roger looked at me, then back at the road. “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “I don’t know.” That hung in the air between us for a moment, and then he turned up the music and we drove on.

  When we were an hour outside Kentucky, Roger’s phone rang. We both stared down at it, ringing and vibrating around the console. HADLEY CALLING read the display. I handed it to Roger, who looked paler than he had a moment ago.

  He took a deep breath and opened the phone. “Hello?” he asked, his voice suddenly a little deeper.

  I looked out the window fixedly, so it wouldn’t appear that I was listening to his conversation, but it was impossible not to.

  “Hey,” he said. “So I’m actually almost in Kentucky. I didn’t know if you were around….” Roger looked over at me, then back at the road, clearing his throat. “With a friend,” he said, and I felt myself deflate a little after he said that. I stared out the window and tried not to be ridiculous. I was a friend. I should be glad I’d accomplished that, not be inexplicably disappointed that he’d identified me correctly. “Okay,” he said, then must have gotten cut off, because he frowned, listening. “But are you around?” he asked. “If so, it’d be good to see you—” He stopped again and was silent, listening. “So I should just call you when we get to Louisville?” he asked, sounding a little frustrated this time. “Fine,” he said after another small pause. “Sounds good.” And then he hung up without saying good-bye, something that no longer surprised me. He looked at me. “Hadley,” he finally said. It sounded like he was pronouncing her name a little differently now, without the same kind of inflection he’d used a few days ago. It no longer seemed like her name was constructed solely from the alphabet’s finest letters.

  “I assumed,” I said. I waited for Roger to fill me in on the conversation, but he was silent, staring at the road, frowning slightly. “Um, what did she say?”

  Roger sighed. “She wasn’t very clear. That never was one of her strong points. She’s never really liked making plans. She said she might be around, she wasn’t sure, but I should call when we got to Louisville.”

  “Is that where she lives?”

  Roger shook his head. “A little ways outside it,” he said. “Hummingbird Valley.”

  An hour later we crossed into Kentucky, THE BLUEGRASS STATE, according to the state sign. Roger pulled into a gas station—a Git ’n’ Go, which was one I’d never seen before—and took out his phone. I stretched my legs, headed to the bathroom, then picked us up sodas and a Kentucky road map, just in case. When I headed back to the car, Roger was still sitting there, just staring down at his phone.

  I slammed the door, settling into my seat, and handed him his root beer. “Well?” I asked.

  “Now she’s not answering,” he said. He sighed and looked out at the highway. “I’d hate to have come this far for nothing.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I just took a sip of cream soda. “I think we should go,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, a little surprised he was going to give up this easily. But I was willing to pick a new destination. I took out the atlas. “So where should we go?”

  “No,” he said, looking at me, “I mean, I think I should go to her house.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure that was such a great idea, but I didn’t know how to tell Roger that without making him feel like a stalker. But I could only imagine what I would have felt if Michael had shown up on my doorstep. “I don’t think that’s the best idea, Roger.”

  Roger sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “I know that,” he said. “But are we just supposed to hang around the Git ’n’ Go? And wait for her to call?” He shook his head. “She was always doing things like this….” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at his phone again. “I think we just swing by. And then at least I’ll have given it my best shot. Because knowing her, she might not remember to call back for three days.”

  I opened my mouth to try and talk him out of this plan, then stopped when I saw the expression on
his face. It was determined, and I’d never seen him look so set on anything—not even Chick-fil-A. And he probably hadn’t wanted to go to Yosemite, either, but maybe I’d looked something like he looked now. “Okay,” I said, opening up the Kentucky map. “Let’s go.”

  Roger looked at me, surprised, then gave me a quick smile. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Sure,” I said, focusing down on the map. “Hummingbird Valley?”

  “Yes,” he said, signaling and pulling back on the highway. He handed me his phone. “Hadley Armstrong. I have her address in my phone from when I sent her flowers over Christmas break.”

  “That was nice of you,” I said, looking up at him.

  “Well, I thought so,” Roger said with a small smile. “But apparently, girls don’t like red roses.”

  I had nothing against them. “Really?” I asked. “Because I’m a girl. And I’ve never heard that before.”

  “Seriously?” He raised his eyebrows. “The way she reacted, I thought I’d committed some crime against femalekind.”

  I shrugged. “I just think it’s nice to get flowers,” I said. “It’s the thought.”

  “Even if the thought is trite and cliché? That’s a quote, by the way.”

  “She said that?” I asked, a little stunned.

  “She did,” he said. “For Valentine’s Day, I got her chocolate. I didn’t even go near flowers. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be capable of buying them again, and—”

  “Get into the right lane,” I interrupted him, seeing the sign for Louisville a little late, and hoping Roger would be able to make it.

  “What, now?” Roger asked, already starting to cross lanes of traffic.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.” I looked down at the map. “Okay, so I think we stay on this and go past Louisville, and then Hummingbird Valley should be a ways outside it—maybe half an hour.”

  “Loo-vulle,” Roger said.

  “What?”

  “You said Lou-ee-ville. But it’s pronounced Loo-vulle. Believe me, I got quite the education.”

  “Loo-vulle,” I repeated. “That it?”

  “Beautiful,” he said.

  We were now driving past downtown Loo-vulle; the highway was on an overpass above the city. It was nearing eight, and the sun had just set, leaving a blue, shadowy light over everything. It was lovely; it just made sightseeing harder. But I could see a big stadium outside my window: Slugger Field.

  About twenty minutes outside Louisville, I saw the sign for Hummingbird Valley. I directed Roger off the interstate, and soon it was like we’d turned into an entirely different world. There seemed to be nothing but green rolling hills on either side of us, and everything was dark and quiet and fresh scented. Kentucky smelled great—like fresh grass. Like summer. I rolled down my window and breathed in, and realized with a little bit of a shock that it was summer. A new season had begun without my noticing.

  I looked out the window but I wasn’t seeing any houses; there just seemed to be long stretches of green land broken by occasional white fences. “What is this?” I asked, turning to Roger. “Is it a town?”

  “It is,” Roger said. “It’s a town with only about two hundred people in it.”

  I turned away from what I could still see of the hills and looked at him. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah,” he said, laughing a little uncomfortably. “Welcome to the wealthiest town in Kentucky. One of the wealthiest in the United States.”

  “But I don’t even see any houses,” I said, peering outside.

  “They’re back there, from what I understand,” said Roger, gesturing to the side of the road. “Way back.” He squinted out the window. “I don’t think these are properly called houses. I think they’re actually estates.”

  “God,” I said, looking outside, suddenly feeling nervous myself. “Something tells me we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  “You did not just say that.”

  I scrolled through Roger’s phone, found Hadley’s address—1205 Westerly Road—and pointed Roger in what I hoped was that direction. When we found the street, which was getting harder the darker it got, Roger slowed so we could start looking at the house numbers. But there weren’t any house numbers. There were just endless white fences and the occasional gated entrance with a plaque with the house’s—or estate’s—name on it.

  “Look,” Roger said, slowing even more and pointing to his side of the road. “Do you see that?”

  I looked. They would have been hard to miss. Animal-shaped topiaries stood on an expanse of lawn. But they were bigger and more detailed than any I had ever seen. Two bears, probably to scale, stood on their hind legs, raising paws in greeting to the passing cars. Below them, a fox waved a paw cheerfully. “Wow,” I murmured. Roger rolled the car on slowly, and I turned back for a last look at them before they vanished from view. In the rapidly fading light, they somehow looked almost like sculptures, or enchanted creatures. Less and less like shaped shrubbery, at any rate. “Is that it?” I asked, catching sight of a sign outside a pair of gates. “On the left?”

  The gates were wrought iron, and huge, and connected to two brick pillars on either side. ARMSTRONG FARMS ESTATES was carved on a silver plaque on the pillar on the left. HUMMINGBIRD VALLEY, KENTUCKY was carved on a plaque on the right. The whole setup was intimidating. But lucky for us, the gates were open. “I think so,” he said. Roger looked more nervous than I’d ever seen him. I watched as he clenched and unclenched his hands on the steering wheel and drove through.

  True to his speculation, we did not reach the house for a long, long time. We drove up a gently winding driveway surrounded by green rolling hills. But I felt that at some point, this could not still be called a driveway. After this long, logically, it would seem to become a road again. As we drove, I thought suddenly with a pang about my house back in California, the Realtor’s sign on the lawn and the driveway that had taken me, at most, ten seconds to cross.

  We made another turn in the driveway, and then suddenly it was before us: huge and imposing and what immediately sprang to mind when you pictured a Southern mansion. It was large and white, with columns, dark green shutters on the windows, and side buildings that sloped down from the main house. There was a circular drive in front, but there were no cars parked around it. In the light that was still left, I could see beautifully landscaped flowers and white porcelain pots filled with blooms lining the steps. From what I could see along the side of the house, it looked like there was an expanse of manicured grounds in the back.

  “Wow,” I said, taking it all in.

  “Yeah,” said Roger, looking around as well. “I’d gotten the description, but I see now that she was downplaying it a bit.” He put the car in park and killed the engine.

  I turned away from the house and toward Roger. “So?” I asked. “Game plan? Are you just going to ring the bell?”

  “I guess so,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about this part. I’d thought about getting here, and what I’d say when I saw her, but not the bridge between the two.” Roger cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles. “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to go for it.” He ran his hands through his hair again, making it stand up in all directions. Which was probably not the look he was going for, if he wanted to impress Hadley.

  “Good,” I said as encouragingly as possible. “But—if I could just do one thing …” I leaned forward, closing the space between us in the car, and reached over to him. I placed my hands firmly on his head, feeling the spring and softness of his brown hair against my hands, how on his left side it was warmer, from driving in the sun all day. I had an impulse to run my fingers through it, but pushed it away immediately. Instead I smoothed my hands forward over the cowlick in the back, flattening it down. “There,” I said. “Better.” I smiled at him quickly, then retreated to my side of the car.

  “Oh,” he said, looking in the mirror again. “Thanks.”

  I was about to wish him luck, when I was distracted by the s
ight of a person coming around the side of the house. It was a very large person wearing a white doctor’s mask and brandishing a chain saw. And he was heading toward the car.

  5

  How to Decapitate a Moose

  You’d better go on home, Kentucky gambler.

  —Dolly Parton

  “Okay,” I murmured to Roger, my pulse pounding, “I think what you should do is turn the car on quietly and back down the driveway as quickly as possible.”

  “How,” Roger whispered back to me, “do you turn a car on quietly? And you do remember that driveway, right? You expect me to back down it?”

  “Roger, he has a chain saw,” I hissed. “I am not going to die in Kentucky!”

  Roger burst out laughing as the guy waved with his non-chain-saw-wielding arm. “Hey!” he called. “Y’all lost?”

  “See?” Roger said. “He’s friendly.”

  “That’s probably how he lures his victims! They have made movies about this!”

  “That was Texas,” said Roger, still smiling, rolling his eyes at me and getting out of the car. “Hi,” he called. “I was just … um … looking for Hadley Armstrong.”

  Coming closer, the guy took off his mask and had thankfully turned the chain saw off. We must have activated some kind of motion sensor, because the driveway was now softly lit, and I could see the guy actually looked fairly normal. He was wearing boat shoes, khakis, and a polo shirt. And though he was about the same height as Roger, he was just bigger. Not fat, exactly, just all-around big. Kind of like a teddy bear. Figuring this took him out of murderer territory, I opened my door as well and edged out slowly.

  “I’m her brother,” the guy said. “Lucien Armstrong.” He held out his hand to Roger, and they shook. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Roger Sullivan,” said Roger. “Likewise.”

  “Oh!” Lucien said, snapping his fingers. “You’re the guy who sent roses, right?”

  Roger cleared his throat and gestured to me. “And this is Amy Curry,” he said.

  I stayed where I was, leaning against the car. “Hi,” I said, lifting one hand in a wave.