Don't Fail Me Now(54)

“Fixing the car,” Leah says excitedly. “It was Michelle’s idea.”

“You couldn’t wait an hour?” he asks. “I could have helped.”

“She asked me,” Leah says.

“I wanted to do it myself,” I say.

“Well, I could have jacked the car, at least.”

I put my hands on my hips. “We don’t have a jack.”

“What do you call that, then?” he asks, pointing at the diamond-shaped thing on the ground.

“Oh,” Leah says. “Oops.”

“Whatever,” I say. “I don’t need it. I figured it out. There’s a rock or something in the heat shield. I just have to take it off and put it back on.”

“Well, you could have hurt yourself. Or Leah.” I can’t tell if he’s actually concerned or just mad that I didn’t let him swoop in and save us.

“But I didn’t,” I say, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s not the point!”

“Yeah, the point is I fixed it.” I grin and do a little touchdown dance to drive the point home. I’m just rubbing it in now.

Tim shakes his head. “Fine, but I’m driving today. I no longer trust your judgment.”

“Says the boy wearing Captain America boxers.”

His face reddens. “Now you’re just being mean.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But you can’t drive. You’re supposed to be lying low, remember?”

“Am I supposed to lie on the floor again?” he asks.

“No. Just sit in the back.” In my peripheral vision I see Cass and Denny unzipping the tent flap. “Cass, you want shotgun today?” I call, a weak attempt at making up for last night.

“Whatever,” she croaks.

I grab the wrench and get back to work, my confidence fading fast. I might be able to fix the car, but there are much more important things that are broken. And I’m terrified they might be beyond repair.





THIRTEEN


Saturday Afternoon, Part 1

Tucumcari, NM

Grand Canyon National Park, AZ




We spend the rest of the morning driving through New Mexico’s sandstone mesas and ponderosa pines listening to nothing but the blissful hum of tires on asphalt. I brag about my rattle-repair skills only once every five miles or so. Breakfast is cold, thin instant oatmeal made with water from a fountain near the campsite, but I try to stay grateful—despite the awful development of last night, our luck hasn’t run out just yet. We’ve been listening to the radio all morning for any updates, but Tim and Leah haven’t been mentioned once so far, and we have enough gas to get us a ways before we have to figure out how to score more. Plus, the rising temperature that makes my hair start to frizz and stick to the back of my neck reminds me how close we’re getting to California, to the reality of Buck and what he might give us. I mean, he ended up in Los Angeles; maybe he actually made something of himself. Maybe he’s a sleazy Hollywood guy who makes deals over martinis and calls everyone babe. Maybe he invented an app or something and is living large in Silicon Valley. Maybe he’s rolling in it, and thanks to his deep regret and even deeper pockets, we will be, too.

“Hey,” I ask Leah as we pass through Albuquerque, “do you know what Buck’s doing out in California? Did he tell you anything?”

“Nope,” she says. “Last I heard he was in Utah with Grandma Polly.”

Grandma Polly? “Did you know her?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

“No. She just sent me birthday cards.” Leah sounds bored. She has no idea that she’s exposing my grandmother as a racist bitch who only deigned to recognize the birth of her all-white grandchild.

“Why was he in Utah?” I ask.

“Who cares?” Cass says angrily. I think she can sense the newfound camaraderie between Leah and me.

“Because my mom kicked him out,” Leah says. “He was cheating on her with a legal secretary.”

What goes around comes around, I think, but to Leah I just say, “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. He was always out at weird times and acting shady. I knew something was wrong before Mom did.”

“Even when you were that little?”

“Well, I wasn’t that little,” she says. “I was seven.”

I look over at Tim, waiting for him to correct her, but he’s just looking out the window, yawning. “You couldn’t have been seven,” I say. “That would mean—” The math takes shape in my head, each number like a punch in the throat. Buck left us when I was six, Cass was two, and Leah was already three. If he didn’t leave Leah until she was seven, that would mean he stayed in Baltimore for four years. I would have been ten, Cassie six, Denny a cluster of cells dividing in Mom’s belly. Four years he could have spent still knowing us. Four years that could have changed everything.

“That would mean he’s an *,” Leah says, looking over guiltily at Cass, who’s busy biting her lip and avoiding eye contact.

“You said it,” I say and then switch the radio over to some loud rock station. If I can’t change the past, at least I can drown it out.

? ? ?

We cross into Arizona around one P.M. to find ourselves entering the city of Window Rock as well as the border of Navajo Nation, an unintentional detour that Tim insists is a game changer.