Amy And Roger's Epic Detour Part 21

"I'll be back soon," he said, kissing her quickly, causing me to automatically avert my eyes.

"Call if there's a problem," she called to us.

"We will," my father and I called back in unison, and we exchanged a smile when we realized this.

"Amy, where are your shoes?" my mother yelled to me, sounding exasperated.

"Oh." I looked down at my bare feet. "Just a second," I said to my father, dashing across the lawn. It was still wet, and freshly mowed-an unfortunate combination, and as I looked down, I could see that gra.s.s clippings were sticking to my feet. I ran up the steps to the house and around my mother, still standing in the doorway, to grab my flip-flops from the basket in the mudroom.

I slipped them on and headed outside again, where my mother was holding the car keys in her hand. "Ben, keys," she said in what my father referred to as her Exasperated Voice.

"I've got them," I said, grabbing them from her hand and giving her a quick wave. I ran across the lawn to the garage, and headed around to the driver's side. I tossed the keys in my hand and gave my father my most convincing smile. "I'll drive."

He smiled and walked around to the pa.s.senger side as I opened the driver's door and adjusted the seat. I buckled my seat belt, and pointed at my father. "Buckle up," I said. My father hated wearing seat belts, and the only way Charlie and I had ever gotten him to wear one was by refusing to put ours on until he buckled up too.

"Come on, pumpkin," my father said in his best persuasive voice. "We're in a hurry. Why don't we just go?"

"Fine," I said, unbuckling my own seat belt and turning the key in the ignition the ignition. "Let's go."

My father grumbled and pulled on his seat belt. "Happy now?" he asked.

"Very," I said, snapping my own back in. "Thank you. I'm telling you, you'll thank me someday." I looked into the rearview mirror and began to back slowly down the driveway.

"Music?" my father asked as I pulled the car around the cul-de-sac.

I'd had my license for three months now, but I still had to concentrate when I drove, and was just recently becoming okay with having music playing in the car. When I just had my permit, and found the three-point turn to be on par with quantum physics in terms of difficulty, I'd needed total silence at all times. "Sure," I said as I braked at a stop sign. "You want to hear the King?"

"You need to ask?" my father asked, flipping through the CDs. "Ah," he said, taking one out of its case and sliding it into the player.

"Which one is that?" I asked. When I was driving, I reserved the right to be picky about the Elvis that was played. None of the Hawaii stuff was permitted, for example.

"I think you'll approve," he said, skipping through the tracks. A moment later, "All That I Am" began to play.

"Nice," I said, smiling at him. "I like this song."

"I know you do," my father said. "That's because you are my daughter, and the child of my heart." We drove for a minute, listening to the King croon. "And as a matter of fact," my father added after a moment, "I think we should dance to this at your wedding. Sound like a plan?"

"Dad," I said, rolling my eyes. "Gross. Plus, I think that's a few years away. You know, just a couple."

"Sorry," he said, but he was still chuckling, and I had a feeling that he didn't mean it. "Hand," he said, and I carefully took one off the wheel. He turned my palm up, placed something inside, and then folded my fingers over again. When I opened my palm, there was a Life Saver sitting there. It looked like b.u.t.ter Rum, and I glanced over to see my father tossing back one of his own.

"Thank you," I said, popping it in my mouth.

I pulled up to the intersection at Campus Drive, and realized I didn't know the way from here. "Right? Left?" I asked. It was odd to have to need directions in a car I was so used to navigating in.

"Left," my father said. "Take University." He sighed and looked out the window. "Let's get this over with."

As I put on my turn signal, I saw him crunch down on another Life Saver. "Have you known about this?" he asked, interrupting the King. "About your brother, I mean?"

I glanced over at him, then back at the road, wondering how much to tell him, and wondering if there was any point now in still trying to cover for Charlie. "I knew something was going on," I said. I thought of the failed intervention I'd tried to stage, and wished now that I'd just told my parents about it then. I pulled up to the intersection and braked when the light turned yellow, making some people behind me, who must have been hoping for me to run it, honk unhappily.

"I knew something wasn't right with him," my father said, looking out the window. "I just didn't think it had gone this far."

"I know," I said. "But I think it'll be okay."

My father shook his head. "I hope so, kid." He glanced over at me. "Thanks for coming along."

"Sure," I said, eyes on the light. I took them off for a second, looked over and smiled at him.

"Green," my father said, pointing.

I returned my eyes to the road and stepped on the gas, going through the intersection, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye that wasn't right. It was a flash of red, coming toward me when there shouldn't have been anything coming toward me.

"Amy-" I heard my father say, before everything slowed down. It's a cliche, but it was true. And I think it only happened when there was no point to having things slow down. I knew, somehow, that I wasn't going to be able to do anything about it. It was like I was just getting extra time to see what was coming.

And what was coming was a red SUV running the light, trying to get through the intersection that I was currently in the middle of. There was more honking behind me, and then the other car slammed into us with such force I was thrown back against the seat, my teeth knocking together, and we were spinning around the intersection, and I kept my hands on the wheel the entire time, and I kept pressing my foot down on the brake, as though that would stop all of this from happening. There was a horrible sc.r.a.ping sound, metal on metal, and I saw the pole about a second before we slammed into it, on my father's side. And that's when the car finally stopped. But my father had stopped moving and my forehead felt like it was burning, and someone was screaming and they wouldn't stop. And it wasn't until the ambulance came and a paramedic pulled me out of the car and shook my shoulders firmly, that I realized it had been me.

If you don't mind, North Carolina is where I want to be.

-Eddie from Ohio.

I got back into the pa.s.senger seat and slammed the door, staring ahead at the dashboard. After I'd finished telling Roger what had happened, it had looked like he was about to say something, but I wasn't ready to hear it yet. I'd just pointed to a roadside diner, and we'd headed in to eat an almost silent meal. I didn't know what was going to happen now. But slowly, I was beginning to feel lighter, like I'd just put down something that I'd been carrying for so long, I hadn't realized how heavy it had grown.

Roger slammed the driver's door shut and looked at me. "Amy-," he started.

"How would you feel about Richmond?" I interrupted.

Roger blinked, looking a little thrown by this. "What's in Richmond?"

"Charlie's roommate, Muz," I said. "He was from there, and gave me a note to give to this guy Corey who hangs out at the Dairy Queen. Apparently, the life of a fish hangs in the balance."

"A fish?"

"I know," I said, as Roger started the car up. "I didn't understand that part either."

"And what kind of name is Muz?"

"It's an acronym," I said. "It stands for Messed-Up Zach."

"Ah," Roger said. "Naturally. Well, we can go to Richmond. Why should a fish die in vain?"

Looking down at the atlas, I gave him directions, then took out the envelope that Muz had given me and smoothed out some of its creases.

"How's the money holding out?" Roger asked, after he'd pulled back onto the highway.

"We have one hundred and eighty-five dollars," I said. Hopefully, it would be enough to take us to Richmond, and then Connecticut.

I looked at him sitting across the car from me. At some point it had become the sight I'd gotten accustomed to. I couldn't believe that so soon, I wouldn't be seeing it anymore.

We drove on I-40 for a few miles in silence. Roger kept looking over at me, and I knew him well enough by now to know he wanted to say something. Every time I saw him take a breath, I turned up the volume on his mix. After this had happened three times, and the music was blasting in the car loud enough to rattle the windows, Roger reached over and turned the music off.

"I need to say something," he said.

I looked out the window, bracing myself. I had known that things would change once I told him what had happened. And it looked like I wasn't going to be able to put off finding out how any longer. "Okay," I said. I looked back at him. He was looking out at the road, but glanced over at me before beginning.

"It wasn't your fault," he said.

I shook my head. This was like saying that the sky wasn't blue. Saying something like that didn't make it true. "Of course it was," I said. "I was driving the car."

"That doesn't mean it was your fault," he said.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"I'm serious," he said, in a voice that was free of all humor. He took one hand off the wheel and pointed at a blue van that had switched lanes and was driving next to us. "If that van suddenly swerved and plowed into us, would that be my fault?"

"No," I admitted. "But-"

"So it wasn't your fault," Roger said. "I'm not just saying that."

"It's not just the driving," I said. "I overheard two of the paramedics talking at the scene. They were saying that it was one of the very rare instances. But that if he hadn't had his seat belt on, he most likely would have been thrown into the backseat and suffered only minor bruising. But I made him put it on. And so he was trapped in his seat, and a streetlight pole crushed his skull."

I expected Roger to flinch at this, but he didn't. "No," he said in the same serious tone. "That was just speculation. n.o.body knows. He might have not had it on, and been thrown forward through the windshield. Or he might have had it off and not gone into the backseat. There's no way of knowing. But it was an accident. It wasn't your fault."

I shook my head against these words, not wanting to let them in. This fact was what I had been living with for the past three months. I had ceased to believe in a world where it wasn't true. "But if I'd run the yellow," I said. "If I hadn't forgotten my shoes-"

"You can't think that way. It wasn't your fault," Roger repeated, softly but distinctly. "It wasn't."

"You don't know that," I whispered.

"You don't know that it was," he said. "It was an accident," he said. "A terrible accident. There's nothing you could have done. You didn't do it. It wasn't your fault."

"It was," I said hoa.r.s.ely, not wanting to believe in this reprieve that he was offering me. Because it seemed almost too much to begin to believe in, what he was telling me. And what if he was wrong?

"No," he said simply. "I don't lie. I promise you, it wasn't your fault."

It was this that finally got through. Roger hadn't lied to me this whole time. I knew I could trust him. He wouldn't start lying now, not about something this important. The thought that this hadn't been my fault, that I wasn't to blame, that it had been nothing but back luck and a chain of events I had no control over, was what finally did it. The last few straining boards on the dam burst open, and I started really crying, letting out everything I'd been holding tightly inside. I was relieved, but mostly I was just sad. Sad that I'd been holding on to this when I didn't have to.

Roger slowed the car down, signaled, and pulled off the highway and into a rest stop. He parked the car in front of the picnic tables and killed the engine. Then he unbuckled his seat belt, pressed the b.u.t.ton to undo mine, and slid to the edge of his seat. The center console was between us, but he leaned across it and put his arms around me, as easily as if he'd always been doing it. And I didn't think about anything else but how nice it felt to have someone holding me, someone who wasn't going to let go any time soon. And I turned my face into his T-shirt and just let myself cry, past the point of caring if I got snot all over it, just finally feeling like I could let go, that I could do this. Knowing that he could handle it, and would be there for as long as I needed him to be.

As cars sped by on the Interstate just out the window, Roger smoothed my hair away from my forehead and rocked me back and forth slowly.

"Virginia!" Roger called, two mixes and four rounds of Twenty Questions (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Jonathan Larson, Sir Francis Drake, and Bernadette Peters) later. He pointed out the window at the sign pa.s.sing us by and smiled at me.

I looked over at him, still reeling a bit that I had told him, and that he had been okay with it. He wasn't looking at me differently, as far as I could see. I couldn't quite believe that it was true. But if it was ... it was like another weight had been taken from my shoulders. And it was a relief, now that he knew. Now that there were no secrets between us. Just in time for the trip to end.

"Do you know the Virginia motto?" he asked. "It's Sic semper tyrannis Sic semper tyrannis, which means-"

"'Thus always to tyrants'," I finished for him. Roger glanced over at me, eyebrows raised. "And," I continued, "it's what Booth yelled after he shot Lincoln."

"Impressive," he said, smiling at me.

I took a breath and told him what I hadn't been able to tell him five days ago. "My father was a history professor," I said, barely getting caught up on the past tense this time. "And that was his time period."

"That's a good period," Roger said. He glanced over at me, as though making sure I was okay with this. "Did he like Lincoln?"

I smiled at that, thinking about the Lincoln facts on the note card in my father's favorite book, the one that had come with me across the country. "Almost as much as Elvis."

"So," Roger said two hours later, turning down Into the Woods Into the Woods on my mix and looking out the window, "we're looking for a DQ." on my mix and looking out the window, "we're looking for a DQ."

"We are," I said, as we pulled onto the main street. We drove up and down a few streets that seemed much too nice to have Dairy Queens on them. We only found it, twenty minutes later, because I ran into a gas station to ask for directions. We were directed to an area of town that was a little seedier, with check-cashing places and liquor stores replacing the boutiques and coffee shops we'd seen when we first got into town.

"There," said Roger, pointing. The Dairy Queen, its red and white sign not yet lit, was next to a Greyhound bus terminal. He pulled into the parking lot and looked at the sign that hung just a few feet before us, clearly above where the buses pulled in and left. It looked like there was only one place for both, since the sign read ARRIVALS DEPARTURES ARRIVALS DEPARTURES, without anything even separating the words.

"All right," I said. Roger killed the engine and we both got out, Roger stretching his legs. "I'll be right back," I said. "Want anything?"

"A Blizzard would be amazing," he said.

"What kind?"

He smiled. "Surprise me."

"You got it," I said. I looked at the Dairy Queen and realized that it was a takeout-only franchise, with just a counter for ordering, but no place to sit inside. This explained the inordinately high number of people eating ice cream in their cars or sitting on their back b.u.mpers.

I headed over to the DQ window, pulling Muz's letter out of my pocket. I hoped he knew what he was talking about, because I didn't want to have to be on the lookout for people who looked like they might be named Corey, or to have to try and explain this situation to the counter workers.

I looked back at the car as I crossed the parking lot and saw Roger sitting in our usual spot in the way-back, legs hanging over the edge.

"Hi," I said as I approached the Dairy Queen ordering window to speak to the bored-looking attendant, who was wearing his DQ hat turned to the side.

"Help you?" he asked with a deep sigh.

"Yes," I said. "Muz gave me this to give to Corey? He said you could get it to him?" I slid the envelope across the counter, looking at him closely to see if this code meant something to him.

"Fine," he said, taking the envelope, his expression not even changing, as though he constantly intercepted mail for people in between taking sundae orders. Who knows, maybe he did. "Anything else?"

"Um, yeah," I said, a little amazed that the transaction had gone so smoothly. "Um ..." I looked up at the menu boards and knew exactly what Roger would want-a Reese's Pieces Blizzard with half vanilla ice cream and half chocolate. After a moment of deliberation, I ordered, choosing an Oreo Blizzard for myself. I paid and walked the treats over to the car, still shocked that the hardest part of that process had been figuring out what to order.

I walked around to the back and saw Roger, feet dangling, sungla.s.ses on, even though it was cloudy. And I felt something within me shift. It was the same way I'd felt when I'd proposed we go to Yosemite. The way I'd felt when I'd run to the Jeep and gotten behind the wheel. The feeling right before I threw my leg over the window and tumbled into the room at Promises Kept. The feeling that I was about to do something without being sure of the outcome. The feeling of just jumping off something and hoping that the ground would be there when I landed.

I sat next to Roger in the back, setting the big Styrofoam cups to the side, near the wheel well.

"Hey," he said, smiling at me, pulling off his sungla.s.ses. "Did you get me something good?"

"I think so," I said, trying to ignore how hard my heart was beating. Then, before I could think about it, or a.n.a.lyze, or consider what I was doing, I leaned over and kissed him.