“Mom,” I said. “Do you think she—I mean, if she’d known, would she—”
“Your mother always said you were no sheep but a lone wolf.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Dad said, “she was always proud of you for doing things your own way. For being different. The only thing was, she hoped you’d find someone to run with one day. The problem with lone wolves is they get lonely.” He glanced over at me. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
I remembered how Mom had teased me the day I kissed Liliana. Had she suspected the truth then? Or was she simply happy to see me happy, whatever the reason?
Maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, she’d loved me.
Dad turned the CB back up. “I’ve got to keep an ear out,” he apologized. “You want the radio?”
“No,” I said, “that’s all right.”
Who needed the radio? My heart beat in rhythm with the road.
THE FARMLAND GAVE way to sweeps of brown earth, patchy with low, gray-green shrubs and lingering snow. If I strained my eyes, I could see smoky, purple peaks at the horizon.
“Welcome to Wyoming,” Dad said.
“Is it just me or is most of this country just open space?” I asked.
“They say that if you took every person in the entire world and had them living all together, they’d fit in a space the size of Texas. So, yep, I guess it is.” Dad grinned. “But there’s plenty of pronghorn antelope and mule deer living here. Keep your eye out.”
We stopped in late afternoon and spent the night at a near-deserted truck stop. Dad wanted me to take the “bedroom” and he’d sleep up front, but I refused. I was wide-awake.
The night air was chill and sharp and quiet. I helped Mo clamber onto a picnic table at the edge of the parking lot and lay beside him, my arm around his furry furnace of a body. Above us, the stars were so dense there was almost more light than darkness. I thought of stargazing with Rachel, but the stars had never been so bright as they looked here, hundreds of miles from what I’d call civilization, without anything to distract me.
Did Dad ever lie out and watch the stars? Did he wonder if Mom was out there, looking back at him? Did he worry what she’d think of his life now?
When it got too cold, Mo and I returned to the truck. Mo wuffled his way to Dad, curling against him with a grunt. I put my seat back and shut my eyes, not really caring if I slept. I let my thoughts approach as smoothly and silently as headlights in the rearview mirror, then glide past.
I wondered what Van was up to. Probably babysitting, or maybe skateboarding downtown until the cops came to enforce the curfew. And Amelia—probably asleep already, her dark hair fanned across her pillow, her glasses folded neatly on her bedside table. I felt a dull ache in my stomach. She hadn’t deserved what I’d done.
Eventually, I must have fallen asleep, because Dad was turning the key in the ignition, and we pulled out of the truck stop. The roads grew hillier, and the engine chugged as Dad pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor. We still weren’t anywhere near the speed limit. We passed ranch land: cattle, horses, even bison. In the first light of morning I saw the promised pronghorns, with black-striped faces and forked antlers, bounding across the terrain. Mule deer stood still and wide-eyed, their tall ears splayed like donkeys’.
As we approached the Utah state line, the sage-covered hills gave way to rich, red-orange cliffs. I was exhausted but didn’t want to miss a thing. I stared out the window as we rounded the Great Salt Lake and entered the Great Salt Desert, a table of white dust stretching to the horizon. Signs warned drivers that the next gas station was dozens of miles away. I was glad Dad had fueled up outside Salt Lake City; this didn’t look like a place you’d want to be stranded.
Our third night we spent in Nevada. I let Dad persuade me to lie down in back with Mo, where I fell asleep before I knew it—but I was wide-awake when his alarm went off at three thirty, ready for a breakfast of granola bars and bananas. My body was getting used to Dad Standard Time.
We climbed out of the nubby, brown corduroy hills of Nevada into the frosty, evergreen-covered Sierra Nevadas. Then we snaked back down, Dad riding the brake, me gripping the door handle. I wasn’t used to roads this narrow, steep, or curvy—and this was a freeway!
“Feeling carsick?” Dad asked, and rolled down the window. I rolled mine down, too, and breathed in fresh, piney mountain air. Mo climbed onto my lap and stuck his snout out of the window, drinking it in.
The closer we got to the coast, the more the land smoothed out. Palm trees towered by the sides of the freeway, and brilliant pink flowers spilled over the median. Dad said they were bougainvillea; I didn’t realize he knew a thing about flowers. What else had I missed in all our years apart?
I tracked our progress on Dad’s beat-up road atlas, my finger edging over to that expanse of blue ink off to the left: the Pacific Ocean. I couldn’t believe that after three and a half days of driving, we’d gone from Middle America to the edge of the world.
The San Francisco warehouse where Dad dropped off his cargo was in a stinky, ugly industrial area that could have been back in South Bend if it weren’t for the telltale palm trees waving overhead.
“What now?” I asked as he filled out his log.
He shrugged. “Turn around and go back.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “We just got here!”
“SwifTrux has me picking up another load about an hour away in Vacaville, dropping off all the way back in Benton Harbor. There’s always something that needs to go somewhere.”
“Dad, listen. We just drove a zillion miles to get here, and now you’re saying you want to turn around and leave without even seeing it?”
“It’s not a matter of want, Bee. It’s just my job. I do my sightseeing from the windows of my rig.”
“What about me, then? I’ve never been to California before. Can’t we at least stop for a couple hours and see the ocean? The Golden Gate Bridge? Something?”
Dad stared at his watch and chewed his lip. I put on my most pleading, pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top face. He sighed. “All right.”
We couldn’t abandon Mo, which meant driving or walking—no cable cars for us. Dad refused to drive on any hills in the city—it was illegal with the rig—so we took a not-very-scenic freeway until we saw the on-ramp for the Golden Gate Bridge. Dad pulled off and parked, and the three of us covered the rest of the distance on foot.
The Golden Gate was not what I’d expected. I’d pictured something more like McDonald’s Golden Arches—you know, something that was actually golden. The bridge was the same brilliant color as the cliffs where Wyoming met Utah, striking against the deep blue of the ocean beyond, the pale blue of the sky above. The cables dipped and rose like a graph in math class, and I thought of Van, wishing he were here to see it, too.
Dad and I waited patiently as Mo hobbled beside us up the long, zigzagging flight of stairs to the walkway. Mo didn’t seem too sure about leaving solid ground so far below, but he liked the idea of being left behind even less.
Up on the bridge, the wind whipped around us so fiercely that it felt like we’d be blown off if it weren’t for the railing. To our left was the Pacific Ocean, stretching out forever blue, speckled white with tiny boats in the distance. To our right was San Francisco Bay, with spring green hills beyond it. Ahead, more green headlands, and behind, over our right shoulders, downtown San Francisco, pale and spiky.
“That’s Alcatraz,” Dad said, cupping one hand around his mouth to be heard over the wind, pointing the other toward an island in the bay not far away. “Former home of Al Capone.”
“Long swim to shore,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Even though I was shivering—who would have thought you’d need a winter coat in a place with palm trees?—I didn’t want to turn back. Turning back meant climbing into the truck and heading home,
where my mistakes were waiting for me.
“Let’s go all the way across,” I shouted. “I want to see the city from the other side.”
It was a long walk—a really freaking long bridge—but after more than three days of being cooped up, the stretch felt good. We kept passing tourists posing for photos with Alcatraz and downtown San Francisco as the backdrop. Once they had their photo op, they turned around and scuttled back off the bridge to shelter. I spotted a pair of women holding hands, then a pair of men pushing a baby carriage. Gay Bay. I felt a twinge of envy; maybe coming out would have been easier if my family had lived here. I checked Dad’s reaction to the couples, but either he hadn’t noticed or he was pretending not to care.
On the other side we climbed down off the bridge and walked to the observation point. I picked a bench facing the city and sat, Mo panting at my feet. Dad eased down beside me and swiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand. “So. What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it looks great and all—but how can I really tell? It’s like I’m looking at a postcard. A 3-D postcard.”
“With fifty-mile-an-hour winds,” Dad said. We laughed.
“Don’t you get tired of it? Always skipping from place to place, never stopping to experience things?”
Dad rubbed his chin. “I do, sometimes. But it’s like I feel lighter when I’m moving, you know? When I stay too long in one spot, it’s like there are weights dragging me down.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer, but I asked anyway: “Am I one of those weights?”
“Bee! Never! It’s not you. It’s everything else. After your mother—”
“I miss Mom, too, you know.”
“I know you do,” Dad said. “Of course you do. It’s hard. Harder than I ever imagined.”
“The reason you never want to be home—is it because I remind you of Mom?”
“It isn’t that I never want to be home—”
“Just answer the question! Is it?”
“You remind me of your mother in many ways,” Dad said. “The way you’re so fierce but also so loving. The way you found that damn dog and wouldn’t give him up, wouldn’t let him die. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“But is that why you never come home?”
“I do want to come home. Never think I don’t, Bee. All I think of, all week, is coming home again.”
“I don’t believe you. Then why would you leave in the first place? Do you have a girlfriend somewhere? Is that it?”
“What the—no! I do this because it’s my job, Colby. It’s how I take care of us.”
“Bullshit!” A bunch of tourists heard me and swiveled their heads, but I didn’t care. “Bullshit. Maybe you couldn’t go back to driving a cab, but you didn’t have to choose this. You don’t have to keep doing OTR. You don’t have to buy a rig of your own. Can’t you see? It doesn’t do any good to put away money for my college. I’m not going. I’m tired of school. I’m tired of everything. I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of being a lone wolf, Dad.”
Mo whined up at me. I wiped my stinging eyes. It was a long, cold walk back across the bridge.
DAD HAD LOST what I’d come to think of as his “driving smile.” As we drove across California, he frowned at the road ahead. I slumped in my seat and took in the scenery. The pale green sweep of the Central Valley gathered itself into wrinkles and folds and towering, pine-covered mountains once more.
That night, taking in the fresh air at a Nevada truck stop, I watched the stars glow stronger in the purpling dusk. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, the words just slipping out. “I want to come back here someday—to all these places—and visit for real.”
“If that’s what you want,” Dad said, “I don’t doubt you’ll find a way to do it.”
“Not if I’m bagging groceries for the rest of my life. But hey—I could bag my way around the whole world, I bet.”
“No daughter of mine is going to spend her life as a bagger,” Dad said. “You’re going to college.”
“Not when I’m failing chemistry. And algebra,” I added guiltily.
I waited for him to launch into another lecture, but he just stared out at the darkening hills. “I’ve decided something, Bee,” he said. “I’m coming home.”
His face was in shadow. I couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ve talked so much about the future: getting you through college, buying a decent house someday. But the present is what’s most important. You’re what’s most important. I’ve let you down.”
I wanted to tell him that it was all right. Except what he said was true. He had let me down. And everything wasn’t all right. I let him keep talking.
“You’ve always seemed so strong, Bee—it didn’t seem to matter whether I came or went; you always carried on. But maybe that’s just what I wanted to see.” He paused. “Truth is, I’m sick of being a lone wolf, too. When your mom died, I wasn’t just sad—I was scared. The idea of starting over with a new company, maybe even a whole new career, terrified me. When I made the switch from cabdriving to trucking, your mom was there to help me through. But once she was gone, it seemed easier to go back to what I knew.”
“I was still there,” I said. “I could have helped you.”
“I know, Bee. I know better now. And I’m sorry.”
“What about that rig you’re buying? What about your loan?”
“You know, this stuff with you distracted me. I never made it to the bank.” I thought I heard a grin in Dad’s voice. “I’ll apply for some short-haul jobs near home, see what comes of that. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll think of something else. Until you finish high school, anyway.”
It should have been the happiest news I’d heard in years, but I couldn’t crack a smile. I was afraid that after another three days on the road, Dad would change his mind again.
I said, “That could take a while at the rate I’m going.”
“You’ll finish,” Dad said. “You take as much time as you need to do it right. I’ll be there.”
He stood and slung an arm around my shoulder. And for the moment I believed him.
Driving back across the Great Salt Desert, so white and barren it might as well have been Antarctica, I started feeling homesick. I didn’t look forward to returning to school and catching up on a whole week’s worth of work, or going back to Meijer to bag groceries and mop bathrooms for hours on end (although I wouldn’t mind collecting my paycheck). But I missed Van, who always meant well even when he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong. I missed Robyn, who’d been awfully good to me. And I missed Amelia. Sure, I missed kissing her, feeling her skin against mine, but most of all I missed how comfortable I’d been around her. I’d never had to be anyone but myself.
I felt a nauseating wave of guilt every time I remembered her face when I dumped her. She’d wanted to tell me off, not break things off. I saw that now. I remembered Robyn saying how if she and Lenny gave up whenever things got hard, they’d never have made it so long. I’d done just that.
Dad glanced over at me as I plucked at the hem of my jeans, snapping off one frayed thread at a time. “Why so glum, Bee?”
“You know how you asked, the other day, if I have a girlfriend?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I did,” I said. “She was great. Her name was Amelia.”
“So, what happened?”
I shook my head. “All you really need to know is, I screwed up.”
“Oh.” Dad chewed his lip. “Well, have you apologized?”
“I’ve thought about it,” I said. “But even if I apologize, it’s not like I deserve another chance.”
“That’s up to her, isn’t it?” Dad said. “You apologize; she forgives. Or not.”
“But it isn’t fair.”
“What isn’t fair? You made a mistake. Everyone does.”
“I know.” I took a deep breath. “It’
s just, why should I keep getting second chances—with Amelia, with chemistry, with anything—when Mom never did? She got pregnant, dropped out of college, got disowned by her parents, got cancer, and died. And she was a good person. A great mother. Mo gets hit by a car, and all he loses is a leg. And he’s just a dog! Where was Mom’s second chance?”
Hearing his name, Mo stuck his head out of the back and cautiously licked my ear, then decided he needed to climb onto my lap. I hunched over his warm body, burying my face in his ruff. My throat swelled up like a cantaloupe, and tears ran in hot, salty streams into my mouth.
And Dad didn’t say a thing to comfort me. Not one damn thing. He just kept driving.
Then I felt the truck slowing. My teeth knocked together as we jittered off the asphalt and onto the gravel of an emergency pull off. Dad put the truck in park and switched off the CB. And he still said nothing.
He reached down and tugged at my arms, unwinding them from Mo. I turned my head away, hair falling forward so he couldn’t see my face as he pulled me from my seat. Mo scuttled out of the way, and I banged my knee on the gearshift, but I didn’t have the strength to fight. Dad pulled me onto his lap, and I slumped against him, the steering wheel digging into my side, my face mashed against his flannel shirt as he wrapped his arms around me and cradled me, rocked me, saying, “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”
I don’t know how long we sat like that, but I ran out of tears and started breathing normally again and noticed how disgusting my nose was and began wishing I had a Kleenex. I sat up and rubbed my sleeves across my eyes and nose.
“You okay?” Dad asked awkwardly.
I nodded and began to slide off his lap, but he held me firm.
“Look, Bee. I’ve got something to say, and this might be the only time I get the nerve to say it, so you better listen up. Got it?”
I nodded again, eyes squeezed shut in case I didn’t like what I heard.
“Your mom, God bless her, was a good person, and I miss her every day, all the time. But you’re not giving her near enough credit. Yeah, she got cancer. That sucks, and it sucks a whole lot more that she didn’t make it. But the other things you mentioned—getting pregnant, dropping out—you make it sound like those were mistakes that ruined the rest of her life. And it’s not true, Bee. It’s not true.”
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