by Leah Atwood
“We have a problem.” This time Gavin was the one with doom and gloom in his voice.
“Put your window up so we can keep the cold out then tell me what the problem is.”
“The window is the problem.” Gavin’s head fell back against the passenger headrest.
Avery’s stomach lurched as she looked from Gavin’s pale, drawn face and closed eyes to his right hand. He kept pushing the button that should be raising his window to close it. Only, the window wasn’t moving.
Gah! They didn’t need any more trouble on this trip.
“Maybe you’re pushing it wrong?” Avery tried to be hopeful, but that was the best she could do to put a positive spin on the situation.
Gavin threw the car door open, jumped out, slammed it closed behind him, and went marching off into the snow.
Avery let him go. This was turning into the worst road trip in the history of every road trip ever taken by mankind since the Model-T first came off the assembly line. She couldn’t blame him for needing to walk off his frustration, which she assumed was the cause of his sudden exodus. In his absence, she couldn’t stop herself from leaning over and trying the push-button switch to see if it would by some miracle work for her. If only she could be so lucky.
“Any ideas, kid?” She shut the engine off and turned to look at Eli.
“I packed an extra pillow. We can use the pillowcase and tape it into place over the opening.”
“That won’t keep the cold out.”
“It might keep the snow out, though. If we had plastic…” His voice trailed off as he began digging around on the floor at his feet.
“Here!” Eli tossed the plastic covering from the case of bottled water she’d insisted they bring. “With the plastic and my pillowcase, we should be able to block the worst of the snow and wind. It won’t keep the cold out, but it’ll be better than the pillowcase by itself. With the heat working, we should be fine till we can get it fixed. If the heat still wasn’t working, we’d be in a lot worse shape.”
Avery and Eli worked at getting the plastic and pillowcase stretched over the half-opened window and used some gummy duct tape they found in the glove compartment to seal all the edges the best they could. By the time they were done, Gavin was heading back to the car. His pants were crusted with snow all the way up to his knees, his cheeks and nose were ruddy from the cold wind, and he was chafing his hands together for warmth. Despite all that, he was calmer.
“Sorry for losing it.”
Avery shrugged and offered a smile. “Until I got pulled over in Amarillo, I was wondering if you were even human. You’ve been handling everything so well. I’d hardly call that little scene ‘losing it,’ but it’s good to know you’re not as perfect as you’d first seemed.”
A grin broke across his face, and his eyes twinkled. “Perfect, huh? That sounds good coming from you.”
She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in mock disgust. “Just get in. We should be able to find help at our next stop.”
“What’s our next town?” Gavin hadn’t been awake to read the last few signs.
“Clarendon, I think.”
“They should be big enough to have a hotel, wouldn’t you say?”
Avery nodded as she pulled back onto the road. “Should be, and I can’t imagine they’d all be booked up. Think we should stop?”
Gavin nodded. “We could all use some shut-eye. Even if we only get four or five hours before we get back on the road, I’d feel better if we were both rested so we could be awake in the car.”
Avery, who’d managed about three hours of sleep during the night, was faring better than Gavin, but she had to admit, even she was starting to lose her ability to focus. Her responses were slowing, too. She finally nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Think there’ll be an obvious one, or should we see if GPS can help?”
Gavin activated the screen on his phone and laughed. “I don’t know if we still have it or not, but I must have gotten a signal at some point. All my texts to Mitchell went out.” He pushed a few more buttons. “Clarendon’s not huge, but they have two hotels on the main road. We shouldn’t be able to miss them.”
The thought of sleeping rejuvenated Avery. “So much for being able to drive straight through to Nowhere. But, oh, blessed sleep, here we come!”
Chapter Eleven
Clarendon, TX
December 24, 4:00 p.m.
A light knock came at Gavin’s door. He smiled to himself before swinging it wide to admit Avery. She looked as if she’d barely woken up, and it was a look she wore well.
“Eli asleep?”
She laughed. “He got more sleep last night than anybody. You’d think he would be the one itching to get back on the road.”
“I’m not sure any of us are in a hurry for that.”
“Yeah, but…” Her voice trailed off.
Gavin waved her over to the desk chair resting in front of a table in the corner of his room. “Have a seat.”
He settled in on the bed cross-legged. “I called an auto-parts store before I fell asleep. The guy told me how to fix the window. Said there’s no way to get it replaced around here what with the holiday and all, but fixing it should be fairly easy.”
“Okay. What do we need?”
“A flat-head screwdriver and some strong adhesive duct tape. Hopefully that’s all.”
Avery wrinkled her brow. “I’ve lived my whole life without realizing how valuable duct tape is to automotive repair. How did I ever survive?”
Gavin shook his head at her, a smile lighting his eyes. “I’ll need to remove the interior panel of the door – that’s where the screwdriver comes in – and then I’ll have to pull the window up and prop it into the closed position. I need to wedge something under it so it doesn’t slide back down. Then, to get a good seal at the top, the man I spoke with said to use a good quality duct tape. That should hold it all the way to Nowhere and back to Albuquerque.”
Avery nodded and bit her lower lip.
Gavin wasn’t in a hurry to go stand outside, trying to make a repair he’d never attempted before, so when he thought there might be something else Avery wanted to discuss, he didn’t rush her.
Avery blinked a couple times, her green eyes looking everywhere but at him. “I wondered if I could ask you something about Eli.”
Of all the things he’d guessed she’d want to ask, something about her son wasn’t even close to being on the list. “Sure, but I think you’d have better answers than I would. You know him a lot better.”
She nibbled on her lower lip again for a minute. “Are you a man of faith?”
Huh. Where had that come from? Gavin slowly nodded. “Yes, I’d like to think so, but that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.”
Avery chewed on her lip a bit more. “I’m not very good at these sorts of conversations. Give me a corrupt businessman to interview any day over a conversation about personal beliefs.”
Gavin waited for her to continue.
She eventually made eye contact. “Do you believe in God?”
“I do.” His reply came quick and easy. “I believe in God the Father and salvation through His Son Jesus. Is that what you’re trying to get at?”
Avery’s lips stretched into a smile, and her eyes brightened. “Yeah, that was pretty much what I was going for. Like I said, I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
Gavin leaned back in his seat and relaxed, settling in for a longer conversation. “Was that all you wanted to ask, or was there something more?”
A light blush tinged Avery’s cheeks. “You haven’t known us long, but you’ve spent more time with us than most.”
“Ask away.” Being open came naturally when he knew it would ease her discomfort.
“I don’t understand boys all that well. I mean, I know Eli, but as he’s gotten older, he’s not as easy for me to read. There are some things that worry me, but I don’t want to ask him. If he thinks I’m worried about it, he might
try to hide it from me, you know?”
Gavin could remember going through similar struggles with his mom. “With only the two of you, it’s normal to want to protect each other. The two of you against the world and all that.” He nodded in understanding. “Of course, that mentality may not always be best. I tend to think open honesty is the best course of action, even when you’re tempted to do something else. Maybe especially then.”
She shrugged. “When Eli was little, he would tell me everything. He doesn’t so much anymore. He used to be an open book, too. I—I’ve been worried about his relationship with God.”
Gavin’s wonder grew. She must be desperate for advice to be coming to him, a virtual stranger, for something so personal.
“Eli never protests or puts up a fuss when I ask him to pray, and he goes to church without complaint, but he always seems to be fiddling with his phone when we’re there. I never see him reading his Bible or trying to get involved with the youth group or doing things it seems a teen who loves God ought to be doing.”
“In other words, he’s not doing things exactly the same way you would do them.”
Avery lifted her hands. “See? I don’t know if I’m reading him right. I’m afraid if I keep trying to push him toward God, I’ll end up pushing him away without meaning to.”
“Did he used to be more active in those things?”
She nodded. “I worry he’s going through the motions because he thinks it’s expected. What if it’s all just an obligation he feels he has toward me? It needs to be something that’s in his heart where it can change him from the inside out. I want him to have a vibrant relationship with Jesus, but I don’t see it in him. You’re objective. What do you see?”
Gavin needed to choose his words carefully. “I don’t know Eli well enough to be able to answer your questions. From my own personal experience, though, I can tell you men express their faith differently than women. You may not see it oozing out of his pores, but that doesn’t mean the boy’s not filled with faith. Even as his mother, you can’t know what’s in his heart.”
When his guest said nothing, he prodded. “Are you the type of parent who helps with homework or who does the homework for their child?”
She squinted at him. “I help when he needs it. He won’t learn anything if I do it for him.”
Gavin watched her as he spoke. “Isn’t this the same? You have to allow Eli to find his own path with God, to make his own choices. You can’t do the homework for him, not if you want him to get anything out of it.”
Avery broke eye contact and sighed.
“You don’t have to care for my answer, but I think if you want to know where Eli is in his relationship with God, you should ask him. He’s the only one who can tell you what he’s really thinking.”
“I don’t want to put him on the spot.”
“From what I’ve observed of the relationship you two share, he won’t be offended by your question, and he won’t lie to you. That’s my take on things, anyway. Like I said, you know him a lot better.”
“He felt terrible for bringing your mom up.”
She appeared to be done with the topic of her son’s faith. He allowed the change in subject. After all, she was the one who’d brought it up in the first place. She ought to have the right to say when they were finished talking about it.
“Eli’s a good kid, Avery. You have a lot to be proud of.”
Avery’s hands relaxed in her lap. She dug the toe of her shoe into the carpet and pushed her chair back and forth in a small rotation. “Can I ask you something else?”
Gavin didn’t bother to hold back his smile. “Ask away.”
“Why’d you disappear? You were a rising star in photojournalism. You were on your way to the top, but then you vanished.”
Gavin felt the familiar tightening in his chest and the pinprick sensation moving across his back. “My mom got sick.”
He could see the question on Avery’s face, even if she was too sensitive to ask it.
“Leukemia. The diagnosis was bad. The doctors didn’t give her long to live. My mom had given up her dreams to raise me. We’d always been close, but when she got sick, I knew I had to be there for her. I had some things in my life I regretted, but they were on me. They weren’t things that affected other people. But this was my mom. If I bailed on her, if I couldn’t handle being there and seeing her sick, I would know for the rest of my life, I’d hurt her, and if she died, it wouldn’t be the kind of hurt I could ever apologize for.”
Gavin ran a hand along his jawline, feeling the brush of scruff against his palm. He peeked at Avery and saw sympathy in her gaze. Sympathy, but not pity.
“I broke all my contracts and came home to be with Mom. I moved back in, took her to all her appointments, played board games with her on her good days, read to her on her bad ones. She fought to live, and she did that for me. One of her nurses came to see me afterward. As bad as things were, she told me, most people would have been gone at least a year sooner. Mom fought to live because I asked her to. She did everything she could to stay alive because she loved me.”
Tears burned and threatened to spill over. He closed his eyes against them and tried to put a lid back on the emotion. “She’s gone, and I miss her, but I will forever know I did all I could to help her and that I gave her the best of me in her final years. In the end, it wasn’t enough, but I did everything I could.”
Avery blinked rapidly and wiped at her eyes. “I think men and women handle things differently.”
He stared at her, nonplussed. Hadn’t he just said that, but about faith?
She chuckled. “Okay, I know. Obvious. Hear me out anyway.”
He nodded for her to continue. She tugged at the scarf around her neck, the feminine one she’d been wearing when they’d first met, not his bulky one.
“When a woman sees someone she loves in pain, her natural instinct is to comfort and nurture. No matter how bad the situation is, a woman can find a way to be useful. She can ease the pain or difficulty of the situation in any number of ways.”
Avery paused as if carefully choosing her words. “When a man sees someone he loves in pain, his natural instinct is to protect and defend. He puts the person he loves behind him and raises his sword and shield to fight off the enemy and keep his loved one safe.” She blinked slowly as he watched her. “There are some things against which no man can defend, though. I’m sure you did everything you could to protect your mother, but you were never going to be able to shield her from leukemia.”
What she said made perfect sense. Gavin cocked his head to the side. “That’s an interesting perspective.”
Avery pulled at her scarf and dipped her chin low, breaking eye contact. “It’s something I learned when I was pregnant with Eli. The way my parents handled things was… different. My dad let guilt eat away at him and get in the way of our relationship because he thought he should have protected me better. That’s been years ago, and we’re all fine today, but it’s a lesson I’ve always remembered.”
Wanting to break through the fog of emotion in the room, Gavin winked at her. “You’re smarter than you look.”
She shook her head. “That’s another thing I know about men. They crack jokes when things get serious.”
Rising from the bed, Gavin gave her a thoughtful look. “We might try to lighten the mood, but don’t take that to mean we didn’t hear the message.”
Avery gazed into Gavin’s intense brown eyes. She was going to melt into a puddle on the spot. But she was too young for hot flashes. Wasn’t she? She held herself together enough to nod acknowledgement, but she was ever-so-thankful when he glanced toward the door and changed the subject.
“I’m going to ask at the front desk and see if they have a screwdriver and some duct tape I can use. If I’m lucky, they’ll let me pull the car in under the front portico out of the snow.”
The mention of their fluffy white nemesis served as a cold shower. “Is it still snowing out there?”
>
“I took a glimpse out the window when I first woke. It doesn’t look to be coming down much anymore, but the streets are still covered. I’m guessing everybody got overwhelmed by the magnitude of the storm.”
“Especially if they believed it would stay to the south the way we did.”
“According to the television, the worst of it is still staying well to the south of here, but as a result, most of the resources to help with people and roads are being sent there as well, leaving the people this far north in a bit of a bind.” Gavin stood up and stretched. “Feel free to hang out here, but make sure you lock up if you leave.” Then he stuck his room key in his back pocket and headed toward the door. “I’ll go see what I can do to get the window fixed.”
Avery nodded but stayed quiet. What she really wanted was a shower, but somehow saying so while she stood in Gavin’s hotel room seemed wrong. Or weird. Awkward, at the very least.
Gavin had kindness in him. She could see it in his eyes and in the way he treated the people around him. He took the time to talk to others. Whether it was the mechanic, the cashier at a gas station, or the front desk clerk at a hotel – he made friends everywhere he went because he was nice to everybody and took the time to treat them as individuals. More of a straight-to-the-point person, Avery knew the niceties of conversation had never been her strong suit. She could learn a thing or two from Gavin.
But first – hot shower!
Gavin was able to get the window secured in place much more quickly than Avery had anticipated. She was still fresh from the shower when he knocked at her door. “It’s ready. Let’s grab a bite to eat and blow this joint!”
They decided, for the sake of getting to Nowhere before midnight, they would get fast food and eat in the car.
“I’ll take this stretch.” Gavin climbed into the driver’s seat. Avery, who wasn’t used to being told what to do, wasn’t nearly as bothered by his high-handed controlling of the situation as much as she thought she ought to be.
