Amy & Roger's Epic Detour (33 page)

Something in what Lucien said was ringing a loud bell, and I had a quick flash of Charlie, seeing his head disappear over the porch railing as he snuck out, night after night. “I think my brother does the same thing,” I said slowly. “I don’t know if he runs away from stuff. But I think he likes to go places where people can’t follow him.”

“Yeah?” Lucien asked.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the absence of my brother. I had spent so long carefully not talking about him. But suddenly I wanted to. I knew without being able to say why that Lucien would understand. “He’s in rehab,” I said out loud, for the first time.

He looked at me for a long moment, then up at the sky with a short laugh. “So’s my mother,” he said. He shook his head. “She goes almost every summer and dries out. She and my father tell everyone that they’re just on a trip, so they can get some golf in. I even believed it until a few years ago, when Had set me straight.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, hoping he would know that I meant it.

“Me too,” he said, looking at me with a smile. “God, we’re a regular Norman Rockwell painting, aren’t we?”

“Happy families are all alike,” I said, quoting from a book I’d once overheard my mother and Charlie talking about.

Lucien nodded. “Exactly.”

I leaned my head against the back of the seat and looked up at the sky. “Hey, do you know the Kansas state motto?”

“I don’t. Enlighten me.”

“It’s
Ad astra per aspera
—that’s the Latin. In English, it means ‘To the stars’—”

“Through adversity,” Lucien finished. I glanced over at him, impressed, and he knocked on his skull. “Not just a hat rack.”

“Impressive,” I said, leaning my head back again. “I just thought of it tonight. It’s beautiful out.”

“It is,” he murmured. “Amy …” I turned my head to look at him and saw that he had slid a little closer to me. As I watched, surprised, he slid even closer, reached out, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind my ear. His hand lingered there for a second, and then traced the curve of my cheek, stopping at my chin.

“Oh,” I murmured. “
Oh
. Um …” I had not been expecting this. And it felt like it had been a long time since I’d had to deal with something like this. I liked Lucien, sure, he was really nice, but …

He slid a little closer, his arm resting along the back of the seat, and now right behind my shoulders. And as he did this, I did feel a little thrill. Here was a boy who liked me, who seemed to want to kiss me under the stars. I was still trying to figure out what I was feeling, and what I was going to do, when he leaned even closer and tipped his head toward mine.

At that instant, the light in Roger’s window came on, and I looked up at it, effectively ruining the moment. Lucien looked toward the light as well and slid back a little bit to his side of the car. “Looks like Roger’s awake,” I said, stating the obvious, just trying to cover some of the awkwardness.

“Looks that way,” Lucien said, with an embarrassed smile.

I smiled back and slid away. “I’d better go to bed,” I said, getting out of the car. I closed the door and leaned over the open window. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” Lucien said easily, though I noticed that he was blushing a little—at least, his sunburn appeared more pronounced. “You drove tonight,” he said, looking at me. “That’s huge.”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the panic begin to rise when I thought about it, the moment when the car had slipped out of my control once again. I pushed the feeling away as best I could and tried to tell myself that I was okay. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Maurice. I turned and headed to the guesthouse.

“One thing,” he called to quietly to me, and I turned back to him. “Do you have a favorite animal?”

I was not prepared for this question. I don’t think I’d been asked it since the age of eight, at any rate. Amy! would have known the answer immediately. It was probably kittens. Or unicorns. But she never would have had this night—she wouldn’t have taken a chance and gone out barefoot to drive a Jeep around a meadow. And I had. “I don’t know,” I said, considering the question. “I’ve always liked owls, I guess.”

“Owls?” he asked. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said, with a laugh. “But that might just be because I like lollipops. And potato chips. The ones with glasses, I guess. Why?”

“No reason,” he said, backing the car up and turning in the direction of the main house. He gave a little honk, then disappeared down the road, leaving stillness and darkness behind him. I looked up at the house and saw that Roger’s light was back off.

I walked inside, unable to keep a smile off my face. Lucien liked me. He wanted to kiss me. After Michael, and so much time alone, and so much time not connecting, I’d thought that it might never happen again. But it had.

As I headed into my room, I saw my cell lying on top of the perfectly made bed. I picked it up, thinking about Lucien’s mother drying out in some rehab, not wanting him to damage her grass with his creations. My mother had come to see all my shows, until this last one. She’d always brought me flowers. And though it had embarrassed me at the time, I could always hear her cheers, separate from anyone else’s, when we took our curtain call.

I called her cell, pressing in the code to send a message directly. “Hi, Mom,” I said, after the beep. “I, um, just wanted to say hi. We’re in Kentucky. And I’m okay. So you don’t need to worry.” I hung up and looked down at the screen. I had been trying not to think about this, but she probably was worried. So maybe that had helped a little. I went to bed feeling like a small weight had been lifted.

In the morning, when I went downstairs to see if Roger was awake and, if so, whether he had made coffee, I saw something on the front porch and went out to investigate. And there it was, sitting on the top step—a very small topiary owl. I picked it up and looked at it closely. It was amazing. There were ridges over its nose and around its eyes, and I realized after a moment that it was wearing a pair of glasses.

FROM:
Charlie Curry ([email protected])

TO:
Amy Curry ([email protected])

SUBJECT:
hey

DATE:
June 10

TIME:
4:45 p.m.

hey—

just wanted to say hi & make sure you’re okay. i wrote and asked mom & she said that she didn’t want to talk about it, but that you were “greatly disappointing her.”

it doesn’t sound like you, but well done!

anyway, hope you’re good.

charlie

FROM:
Me ([email protected])

TO:
Charlie Curry ([email protected])

SUBJECT:
Re: hey

DATE
: June 10

TIME:
11:45 p.m.

Hey—nice to hear from you.

I hope you’re doing well and that things are going okay with you.

I’m in Kentucky right now. (It’s a long story.) Let’s just say that Mom is furious with me, but the feeling is mutual. I’ll have to tell you all about it someday. I kind of wish you had phones there, actually. I think it’s an in-person story.

Talk to you soon, hopefully.

—Amy

She met a boy up in Kentucky.

—Steve Earle

“She’s home,” Lucien told us. He had arrived at the guesthouse shortly after I’d found the owl. Roger had emerged just as Lucien came in, and now poured himself a glass of water in silence.

“Just now?” I asked.

“Just now,” he said, crossing into the kitchen and taking a banana out of the fruit basket he’d brought with him that morning. “She’s probably going to bring the horse trailer around to the stables, get them settled in, and then go back to the main house.” By this point, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they had stables, but I was. “So here’s what I think,” he continued to Roger. “Why don’t Amy and I make ourselves scarce, and you can drive around to the house, and that way Had won’t have to know that you two stayed here last night?”

Roger just shrugged. “I don’t care if she knows,” he said a little sharply. “I’m not going to lie about it.”

“Okay,” I said, looking at him and trying to gauge what he was feeling. I’d woken up early, checked my e-mail, and done some research on Charlie’s facility. I hadn’t opened Julia’s e-mail, but I had looked at the subject line for a long moment before shutting the guesthouse laptop down. Roger had been holed up in his room that morning, and I hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him about the night before. He seemed to be preoccupied—which was understandable, considering that he was about to see Hadley. “But it’s probably best that I’m not in the car with you, right?”

Roger looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “Right.” Maybe picking up on Roger’s tense vibe, Lucien left to load the bags into the car. When the door slammed shut behind him, I turned to Roger, trying to figure out what was going on with him.

“You feeling okay about this?” I asked.

“Fine,” he said, a little shortly. He glanced outside, then asked without looking at me, “Where did that owl come from?”

“Oh,” I said, smiling at it. “Lucien made it. Isn’t it cute?”

“Yeah,” he said hollowly. “Cute.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. I hadn’t ever seen him this withdrawn and couldn’t put my finger on what exactly was wrong.

“Fine,” he said again. “I’m fine.” He took a breath and looked at me. “Are you—,” he started, as Lucien came back in.

“Bags in the car,” he said. “All set?”

“Yep,” said Roger, causing me to smile. I took a last look back at the guesthouse, and we headed out to the cars. I placed the owl carefully in the backseat, and Roger glanced back at it, shook his head, and got in the driver’s side.

“Okay,” I said. “So I guess just call when you’re …” I wasn’t sure how to end this sentence. “When you want me to come meet you,” I finished. I pressed my lips together and looked at Roger in the car, my spot beside him empty. I was trying not to think about it, but I knew that our trip as we’d been taking it might well be over in a few minutes. Hadley had been his objective this whole time. And now that he’d reached it, what did that mean? If he and Hadley got back together—a thought that made my stomach clench a little bit—I had a feeling he wouldn’t be continuing this trip with me.

“Right,” he said.

“Amy, you want to drive again?” Lucien called to me from where he was standing by the Jeep.

Roger looked up at me, startled. “What?” he asked, staring at me. “When did you—”

“I haven’t had a chance to tell you yet,” I said, feeling like there was a lot to catch up on, and wishing that we could do it without Lucien there, and without the audience with Hadley looming. “But yeah, last night. I drove the Jeep for about a minute.”

“Until she decapitated a moose,” Lucien called.

“It was just shrubbery,” I said by way of explanation, wishing that I could have told Roger myself.

“Wow,” he said, still looking at me. “That’s … that’s great. Good for you.”

“Thanks,” I said. Silence fell, and it seemed like there was something off, or a little bit strained, between us.

“Well, I should go,” Roger said, starting the engine. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Good luck,” I said, then immediately worried that that wasn’t the right thing to say. “I mean, I hope it goes well. I mean …” My voice trailed off as he continued to stare straight ahead, and I realized I had no idea what I was really trying to say anyway.

“Right,” he said. Then he backed the car out of the guesthouse driveway, heading off to Hadley.

Lucien ended up driving, and we headed around the back of the property and up a hill that seemed to be the highest point on the grounds—the main house was below us, and around the back of it, I could have sworn I saw tennis courts. We were right above the stables, and I could see, in addition to the main building, several different rings, with jumps set up, and what I assumed was an indoor ring in a huge, circular building.

“Wow,” I said, taking it all in. It was warm out already, with the promise that it would be really hot around noon. But right now, it just felt good. I breathed in the scent of sweet grass, looked over the expanse of green all around me, and wondered just how I’d gotten there. “What is that?” I asked, pointing to a building near to what looked like a pond. It was so far off in the distance I wasn’t even sure if it was still part of the Armstrong estate.

“That’s the hunting camp,” Lucien said, looking to where I was pointing. He sighed. “My father’s favorite thing to do. He can’t understand why I want to make fake ducks when we can just shoot the real thing.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling how clearly we were no longer in California. I’d never met anyone who hunted before.

“Yeah,” he said. “He’s planned this whole trip for him and me this November, in Canada. Which is probably going to be right in the middle of midterms. I’m trying to get out of it.”