by Cat Johnson
That was another thing he’d decided it was safer to give up—competing. His mother couldn’t take the worry that he’d be injured, or worse, killed. And he couldn’t afford to miss work. Last year’s injury had put him out of work for a few weeks.
He knocked that depressing memory out of his mind and glanced at the passing signs along the highway.
Next stop, Arizona. Or more likely a rest area along the way so he could stretch his legs and take a piss. And maybe buy another energy drink to keep himself alert. That was always a challenge on a solo long-distance drive.
Even so, he wouldn’t trade the solitude for company. A man had to do what a man had to do for a little peace. It might mean keeping his sanity.
Chapter Eight
Phoenix kept the windows down in the Volkswagen.
The A/C wasn’t exactly working all that well, so she had no choice. Much like her tiny apartment, the Bug wasn’t perfect, but it got her where she was going and it was all hers.
Not to mention the used 2003 Volkswagen Beetle had been all she could afford at the time. She’d bought it the year she’d turned eighteen with her own money, which she’d saved from babysitting.
It was old and worn but even so, she loved it. It was good on gas. Easy to park. Very cute in its own little beetlelike way. It was a classic car and had the original body styling that got attention from folks young and old wherever she drove.
Her little yellow car had character—just no A/C at the moment.
That was okay. It felt good driving with the windows open. The wind whipped through her hair as the highway scenery hurtled past.
It wasn’t a horrible drive from her part of California to Phoenix, Arizona. Still, it was over four hours, and that was much farther than Phoenix was used to driving alone.
She pretty much only went to work and to her parents’ house, with stops in between at the occasional store or restaurant, and Kim’s place.
If Kim had been able to come, Phoenix would have asked her friend to accompany her.
Would that have been weird? Meeting her birth mother for the first time with her best friend in tow? It was going to be weird enough as it was.
What exactly did one say in this situation? Excuse me. You don’t know me, but I think you might be my mother.
Wasn’t there a children’s book just like that? If she remembered correctly, it was about some animal—or a bird maybe—who wandered around asking every random animal he could find, “Are you my mother?”
That scenario felt a bit too close to the reality of this little road trip. Phoenix stifled a groan.
The situation was certainly going to be awkward, and it wouldn’t matter whether she blindsided this Bonnie Martin alone or with Kim as her wingman. But Kim’s department head had scheduled a meeting for tomorrow and she couldn’t have come even if Phoenix had begged her to.
Phoenix probably should have postponed the trip until Kim was free, but something had driven her forward. Probably the fear that if she didn’t do it now, she’d chicken out and never go.
She didn’t know where the urgency originated, what force propelled her toward the city in which she’d been born. All she knew was that she was almost four hours into the road trip and there was no turning back now.
Twenty-five years she’d lived happily without knowing anything more than that she’d been adopted by the two people she called her parents. Now she was putting all of that in jeopardy.
She might wind up discovering something she didn’t want to know.
Worse than that, what if this was the wrong Bonnie Martin? That would be horrible. And embarrassing. She could walk in there, accuse the woman of having a baby out of wedlock twenty-five years ago, and make a fool of herself.
Or, if it was the right Bonnie Martin, Phoenix’s sudden appearance could expose a secret to Bonnie’s current family that she’d never wanted them to know—hence the closed adoption.
Every scenario Phoenix’s spinning brain came up with seemed worse than the last. Maybe it would be better to just observe the woman from afar for a little while and then decide whether to introduce herself. She could casually ask questions. See what she could discover. Do a little more research online. She’d checked the big social media sites and hadn’t found Bonnie, but maybe if she dug deeper, she’d find a profile on one of the lesser-known sites.
Though this all sounded an awful lot like the behavior of a stalker.
Great. She’d probably end up in jail with a restraining order filed against her by some woman with no connection to her whatsoever but who had the unfortunate luck of being named Bonnie Martin.
Phoenix sighed, doubting this entire trip more with every passing mile marker on the interstate.
The letters on the sign on the horizon appeared to grow larger as she moved closer until she could read the words “Phoenix Exit 2 Miles.”
The sign, physical evidence of how near she was to her destination, had her insides twisting. It was way too late to turn back now.
The vibrating of her phone in the console startled Phoenix. She reached for it and answered, “Hello?”
“Where are you?” Kim asked.
“Almost there. I just saw the exit sign for Phoenix.”
“Oh my gosh. Are you nervous?”
“Yes, thank you. Don’t remind me.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“It will. She’s going to love you.”
“I’m not so sure about that either.” A twenty-five-year-old stranger showing up at the door out of the blue asking about a closed adoption? Phoenix didn’t think that made for a cozy family reunion.
“Well, I am sure. Just relax. Maybe pull over when you get to town and get yourself together for a minute before you head to her house.”
Phoenix frowned as a thin trail of smoke began to creep from the crack between the car’s hood and her windshield. She was nearing the exit ramp anyway, so she slowed and the smoke got thicker. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?” Kim asked through the earpiece of the phone.
“Something’s wrong with the car.”
“What else is new? Something is always wrong with that car.”
The smoke billowing from under the hood was definitely new. “It’s more than the squeak in the brakes or the A/C blowing hot air.” She glanced at the dashboard and saw the temperature gauge had moved into the red. “I think it’s overheating.”
“Oh, no. That’s bad. You’d better pull over.”
“That’s my plan.” Phoenix tried to turn on the blinker and navigate the car off the highway, all with only one hand as she held the phone in the other. She really had to buy a hands-free earpiece before she got into an accident or got a ticket. “Listen, Kim, I gotta hang up and put the phone down. I’m going to have to find a service station or something and get someone to help me figure out what’s going on.”
“Okay. But call me back to let me know what’s happening.”
“I will. ’Bye.” Without even waiting for Kim to say good-bye back, Phoenix ended the call and tossed the phone onto the passenger seat.
She’d gotten a late start and it was already evening. She wasn’t sure she’d even find an open service station.
The smoke or steam or whatever it was her poor little car was spewing billowed thick and steady. It obscured her view of the road and made her wonder if she was in danger of the car going up in flames with her in it.
Just up ahead, she saw a long low building. Through the cloud of smoke hanging in front of the windshield she could just make out writing on the sign out front. It read not much more than “BAR” in big block letters. The place looked as if it had seen better days, but to Phoenix it was like an oasis in the desert.
Desperate to park and get out of the car in case it was about to burst into flames, she eased off the road and into the large lot, pulling all the way off into the corner, away from the few other cars there, just in case the worst happened.
Should she grab it or leave it there? Neither seemed like a good option at the moment. She didn’t want to crawl into the smoking vehicle any more than she wanted her stuff to go up in flames.
She was just deciding what to do when her phone vibrated in her hand. Glancing down at the screen, she saw Home on the readout.
Groaning, she picked up. “Hello?”
“Hi, sweetie. What are you up to during your last few days of summer break?”
“Hi, Mom. I’m, um, out. I had some things to take care of before school starts again.” The guilt assaulted her.
She hadn’t told her mother or father anything. Not what she’d accidentally found out about her birth mother or that she was crazy enough to drive all the way to Arizona because of it.
That she’d felt she had to lie to her mother about this trip was a good indication she shouldn’t be taking it. Even so, she changed the subject to get her mother into safer conversational territory. “Did I tell you they gave me a different classroom this year?”
“No. Are you unhappy about that?”
“It’s fine, I guess. Just different.”
She really didn’t know where she was going with this line of discussion. All she’d wanted to do was get her mother off the topic of where she was and what she was doing so she wouldn’t have to lie about it.
She couldn’t exactly tell her the truth while on the phone, standing next to her smoking car. The discussion about how she was in Arizona stalking her birth mother, whose name she’d gotten on the duplicate birth certificate she’d ordered because she’d lost her original, should really happen in person, but that was impossible right now.
Oh, what a tangled web . . .
After this trip, she was never getting herself into a web of deception like this again.
“Anyway, I was calling to see if you wanted to come for dinner tonight. It’s lasagna.”
Uh-oh. That was her favorite and her mother knew it. She scrambled to come up with a believable excuse to miss dinner. “Oh, I wish I’d known. I, uh, have a date tonight.”
“A date? You didn’t tell me about that.”
Uh-oh. She had chosen a bad lie—not that there was ever a good one—but now her mother would want to know about this nonexistent man in her life. Then, tomorrow, her mother and father both would want to know how the fictional date had gone.
Her little white lie was rapidly snowballing out of control. She never should have answered the phone in the first place. She could have pretended the battery in the cell was dead or something.
Lesson learned. She would be more careful in the future, but she still had to extricate herself from the mess she’d created.
“Well, it’s not really a date. Kim invited me over for dinner along with a few people from school, and she said one of the teachers was bringing her single brother and she was going to introduce us.”
Cripes! The snowball was growing into an avalanche.
“Oh. Did Kim tell you anything more about him?”
In the face of yet more questions from her mother, Phoenix realized she needed to end this call. In an attempt at a Hail Mary, Phoenix threw out one last fib. “Mom, can I call you back? Kim is calling on the other line.”
“Of course.”
“Great. Talk later. ’Bye.” She hit the Disconnect button and didn’t breathe freely again until she saw the screen go blank.
As she stood next to her steaming vehicle, Phoenix pocketed the guilt over the rapidly growing list of lies she’d told her mother and turned her attention back to the more pressing issue. What was she going to do about her car?
What if she couldn’t get it fixed? What if she had to call her parents to come get her?
After all the fibs she’d just told, she couldn’t call them. Kim would just have to be the one to come.
But maybe things weren’t as dire as she supposed. She tried to look on the bright side as she glanced at the building whose lot she’d landed in. It looked open. At least the neon beer signs were lit. That was a good sign.
The bar didn’t, however, look like a place she’d normally ever go in on purpose. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. She really had no other choice.
Phoenix locked the car doors, even though the risk of someone trying to take the VW in the state it was in was pretty unlikely. She had opted to leave her overnight bag in the car, though, so there was that to protect. If it didn’t burn up, she didn’t want it to be taken.
After one more glance at the hood to make sure there weren’t any flames amid the waning smoke, she turned toward the building. With any luck, there’d be an auto mechanic having an after-work beer inside.
She could only hope.
Chapter Nine
A road trip always sounded like a good idea in theory. There was the usual excitement of getting ready. Packing a bag. Buying snacks and energy drinks. Mapping out a route. Heading out on the open road.
Then there was the reality. The idea of a road trip was far better than the actual trip itself.
By hour twelve in the cab of the truck, Justin was ready to throw himself out the door and onto the highway. By hour fourteen, the seat had long ago made his ass numb. His lower back ached. He was torn between boredom and sleepiness, neither of which was good when driving.
The sign for the Phoenix exit was a welcome sight.
Neon glowed through the waning light of dusk from a building on the side of the road, calling to Justin like a beacon. He was hungry, thirsty, and he had to piss like a racehorse.
The place didn’t look like much, but judging by the sign, he was pretty sure it would provide at least a few things he needed. Those being a beer and a bathroom. Throw in a fat juicy burger and he’d be in heaven.
Swinging the truck and trailer into the parking lot, Justin anticipated the sweet freedom of getting out of the cab.
Barely taking the time to pull the key out of the ignition, he swung the door wide and stepped down onto the blacktop.
The paving of the parking lot had seen better days. There were potholes and cracks, but he’d never been so happy to set foot on pavement as he was then.
Driving his brother’s old truck like a bat out of hell to blow off steam for an hour was one thing. Justin had learned that driving it across the country was quite another.
Stretching his back, Justin groaned. From now on, he’d stick to the short trips and use his own truck or one of Rohn’s for any long-distance escapes. But he’d made it to Phoenix, so he was halfway done.
He’d take a quick meal break here, then head to Bonnie’s house and spend the night. He needed to assess the situation there. He didn’t know if there were just boxes or larger furniture that would require another man to move.
Rohn had told him Bonnie’s neighbors were friendly, and he could knock on their door if he needed anything. The antisocial side of Justin hoped he’d be able to get everything into the truck by himself, and that he wouldn’t have to ask for help or even talk to another living being.
Tomorrow, as soon as the last of the things were loaded into the truck, he’d turn around and head back to Oklahoma.
He wasn’t looking forward to fourteen more hours on the road tomorrow, but he sure was looking forward to a cold beer and a hot burger tonight.
Finally being able to feel his legs again as the blood began to circulate, Justin took one stiff step and then another toward the oasis before him.
Justin pushed through the heavy wooden door and inhaled. It looked and smelled like all the other bars he frequented.
The scent of stale beer hung in the air. The lighting was dim, all the better to hide the wear and tear on the old wood and vinyl barstools and chairs. Better for him to hide as well. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about running into anyone he knew here.
The bartender was busy with a woman at
the other end of the long wooden bar, so Justin decided to hit the head before ordering. That would give the man time to finish with the blonde, and it would relieve Justin’s most pressing need.
When he emerged from the bathroom, he saw the bartender still busy in some deep conversation with the woman. The man was probably looking to get some. Not that Justin blamed him.
Another time, another place, and if he’d been in another mood, Justin would be over there talking her up himself. He was a sucker for soft blonde waves. It had been a long time since he’d woken up with some girl’s sweet-smelling hair tickling his nose.
The bartender’s love life—or sex life—was not Justin’s concern. If the guy wanted to flirt, he was welcome to do it. But Justin wanted a beer.
Deciding to give the guy a little reminder that he had other customers, he leaned against the bar. “Hey, bud. Can I get something to eat and drink?”
“Yup. I’ll be right there.” The bartender said a few more things to the blonde, too low for Justin to hear, before he came to his end of the bar. “Sorry. The lady doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Justin let out a laugh. “Lucky you.”
The older man shook his head. “If it was about that I wouldn’t be complaining. Her car broke down outside in my lot, and she’s got it in her head that I should go out and see if I can fix it.”
“In that case, better you than me.” Justin let out a snort.
“Oh, I’m not gonna do it. Believe me. I’m working. I can’t leave the bar unmanned, go outside, and crawl around under a hood gettin’ all greasy.”
“I hear ya. No guarantee you can fix what’s wrong with it anyway.”
“Exactly. I got no tools. No lift. No parts. Hell, I don’t even have a quart of oil here with me.” He shook his head. “Women, right? They just don’t get it.”
“Nope, they sure don’t.” Justin swung his head in agreement.
“Anyway, what can I get for you?”
“I was hoping for a beer and a cheeseburger. If you got ’em.”
