He Started It

Missouri

State Motto: The welfare of the people is the highest law

We’re back on the road now, headed toward the Three Corners. Everyone is looking out the windows, searching for that truck.

‘If you see it again, call the police,’ Felix says.

It’s strange how adamant they are about that truck following us. I swear I haven’t seen it. This makes me wonder if there’s anything else I’m missing.

And I’m not the only one. Eddie hasn’t seen the truck, either. Of all the things he and I don’t agree on, this is the one thing we do.

I catch Eddie’s attention in the rearview mirror. Raise my eyebrow. He rolls his eyes.

Eddie and I have to communicate silently, just as we did on the first trip. There were times we couldn’t talk out loud then, either.

That very first night, we stopped in North Alabama and stayed at a roadside motel that looked a lot like the Stardust. Grandpa got one room with two beds, and he let us kids have them. He slept on a foldout cot he had brought with him.

‘No sense in getting two rooms,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to leave you guys alone in a motel.’

‘We’re old enough,’ I said. But really, I didn’t want to be alone in one of those rooms.

‘Too bad,’ Grandpa said.

On our second night, he called our parents from a pay phone. ‘No cell phones for me,’ he said, although they weren’t too common back then. ‘Too invasive.’

I’m not sure I knew what that word meant, but I knew it was bad.

We stood outside the motel, at a bank of pay phones, and as far away as possible from the other man using one of the phones. He may or may not have been staying at the motel, just as he may or may not have been up to no good.

One by one, Grandpa passed the phone to us.

‘Hi, baby,’ Mom said. Her voice was tight, the way it was when she tried not to yell. She and Dad had to be fighting again. ‘How are you? Everything okay?’ she said.

‘Yeah, everything’s fine.’

‘Where are you now?’

‘Ummm … Louisiana? Yeah, we’re in –’

Grandpa took the receiver out of my hand. ‘Let your brother talk now.’

A few more days passed until I started figuring out what was going on.

We were in Texas. Grandpa had driven north of it and then back down because he said, ‘That damn state is so big, it’ll swallow us if we try to go through it.’ For the most part we went up and around it, then crossed into the Texas Panhandle, near Amarillo. Grandpa wanted to see the row of Cadillacs half buried in the ground.

Right after we crossed the border, we stopped for gas. Grandpa got out of the van and I was sitting right behind the driver’s seat. Something fell out of his pocket and slipped down a crack between the seat and center console. I reached for it and found a cell phone.

I showed it to Eddie, and we opened the flip phone to see a long list of missed calls. They all came from our home number.

Hundreds of them.

They started the day we left on the trip.

Portia is with us tonight, although she has gone out for some air. I can’t blame her, because it’s a little weird having all of us cooped up in a single space. Sure, we could start pre-spending our inheritance on an additional room at a crappy motel, but there’s no guarantee we’re going to get that money. We haven’t made it to the end yet.

Felix and I are in the room alone. He sits at the table next to the window, pretending to work, but he’s really keeping an eye out for the pickup.

I sit on one of the beds and turn on the TV. The reception is sketchy and the channels are limited, forcing me to choose a sitcom episode I’ve already seen. It wasn’t good the first time.

Felix manages to stay quiet for 1.2 seconds.

‘Did you see the truck?’ he says.

‘Personally, no. I haven’t seen it.’

‘I guess you and Eddie weren’t looking,’ he says, turning back to the window. ‘The rest of us saw it.’

‘I guess you would make a better detective than me,’ I say.

‘I didn’t say that.’ He sounds offended. Yes, really.

Am I messing with him? Maybe a little.

I turn up the TV.

Despite all the togetherness, the close quarters, and being in a car with the same people every day, Felix and I have been getting along pretty well. Better than I expected, considering I never wanted him on this trip in the first place.

Things hadn’t been going well before the trip – you may have guessed that. You also may have guessed that Felix wants kids, and soon. I’m not convinced. I’m not sure I want kids at all, actually. Not with him or anyone else. This has been the root of our recent arguments.

The latest was a few days before we left. We went out to dinner with two other couples. Both have small kids and love to talk about them. Felix gobbled up every story, anecdote, and picture, almost swooning at one kid’s new dinosaur sheets and another’s discovery of reading. Yes, swooning. No exaggeration.

When I placed my hand on my glass of wine to take a sip, Felix put his hand on top of mine. Everyone could see it. ‘We can’t wait to get started on our own family.’

The comment surprised everyone, including me.

‘Wonderful!’ said one of the women at the table. We weren’t close. She was a dinners-only friend. ‘Congratulations.’

I pinched Felix’s palm. He withdrew his hand from mine, his smile tight.

He knew I was going to say something about this later, which was why he disappeared as soon as we got home. The argument never happened. It’s still there, simmering under the surface, waiting for us to pick it back up again. Maybe we will or maybe not. There’s nothing like an old-fashioned road trip to make or break a relationship. Each day, sometimes each hour, I find myself shifting between sides.

‘Don’t be pissed,’ he says. Still staring out the window, looking for that truck. Looking to prove me wrong.

‘I’m not.’ I turn off the TV and the lamp on the nightstand. ‘I’m just tired.’

I pick up my phone to set the alarm and notice a missed text. It came in half an hour ago.

From Krista.

Eddie is lying to you. He saw that truck following us.

11 Days Left

Before this trip, I never met Krista and I have no reason to trust her – or distrust her. She has my phone number because we all exchanged them on the first day, just in case. I don’t answer her text, but it keeps me awake for a while. It’s one thing for me to lie to Eddie, but it’s totally different when he lies to me.

At breakfast, everyone reports in. No one saw the black pickup or its occupants. No one even thought they saw the pickup, which makes this more interesting.

I keep my mouth shut about Krista’s text. It’s left unanswered on my phone, and I don’t mention it to Eddie or Felix or anyone else. Let her mind race for a while. It’ll be good for her.

We’re driving west today, straight to Dodge City, Kansas. It was hard to forget Grandpa saying we were ‘going to Dodge so we can get the hell out of Dodge.’ He must have repeated that a hundred times.

No one says it today. Everyone is quiet until Portia opens her mouth.