He Started It(82)

“You think Grandpa planned something for the end?” he says.

Portia adds a single raw sugar to her almond milk latte and turns up her nose at Eddie’s artificial sweetener, which is funny, given how much soda she drank on this trip. Portia doesn’t look at Eddie when she speaks, even though she’s sort of answering his question. “There better be a good reason we had to do this all over again. Because all other things aside, who wants their ashes scattered in the desert? And why couldn’t we just fly them out here?”

I take a bite of my chocolate croissant, because who starts a day like this with bran? “Nikki,” I say.

“Nikki?” Eddie says. “You really think Nikki is waiting for us in the desert?”

Absolutely.

“Nikki would never be that subtle,” Portia says. “It’s not her.”

“I agree,” Eddie says.

I say nothing.

“Maybe the lawyer will be there with stacks of cash,” Portia says.

I try to imagine this. I’ve never met Morton J. Barrie, but I see him as a short man with thick glasses and a bow tie. A younger, dumber-looking version of the Monopoly man. He’s surrounded by stacks of cash, bound together and all shiny and new, looking so clean against all the sand and dirt.

Behind the lawyer is a large hill of dirt no one would look at twice. We made sure of that before we left.

“Final guesses?” Eddie says. He crumples up the wax paper from his breakfast sandwich and tosses it into the garbage. “Before we head out, make your prediction.”

“We end up rich and happy,” Portia says. “Or at least rich.”

I don’t disagree. They’ll see soon enough. “Sounds good,” I say.

“All right, then. Let’s go get some money,” Eddie says.

Portia and I walk out behind him. She rolls her eyes at his back.



* * *



–––––

Three hours. That’s the approximate length of this final drive. Who knows how long it would have been if Calvin hadn’t followed us. He didn’t even try to hide it.

Eddie sat in the middle seat with me, keeping watch to make sure I didn’t do anything wrong. He had become my permanent guard, and an annoying one. No sister wanted that much attention from her older brother.

Portia was in the way back, either sleeping or playing by herself, and that left Grandpa alone in the front with an empty passenger’s seat. He kept talking, though it was mostly mumbling and mostly to himself.

“Is that asshole still following us? He is, isn’t he? . . . Yes, yes . . . There he is . . . I’m going to slow down and see what he does, then I’ll know for sure . . . I’ll just ease off the gas and bring my speed down by . . . Oh look, there it is. He’s slowing down, too.”

Every once in a while, Grandpa would turn and speak to us. “You see that? He’s still following us.”

He always glared at me as he said it, like it was my fault, but I didn’t even know who the man was. Grandpa just blamed me because I had sided with Nikki, because everything was about Nikki. As it should be.

Grandpa looked back to the road and started mumbling to himself again. This went on for an hour, then another, and we were deep into hour three when Grandpa saw the sign.





ALAMO




No, not the Alamo in Texas. The tiny town of Alamo in Nevada, right off I-93 South.

“We’ll end all this right here,” Grandpa said, taking the exit. I didn’t appreciate his flair for the dramatic until I became an adult.

“End what?” I said. He didn’t hear me, he just kept talking.

“This asshole,” he said. “The private investigator.”

“What?” I said. Louder this time.

“Private investigator. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

I shook my head, partly out of confusion, and partly to answer him. No, I obviously hadn’t been paying attention because no one told me Calvin was a private investigator.

“Why do you think he’s following us?” Grandpa said. “And looking for Nikki?”

“Yeah, why?” Eddie said.

I was still shaking my head, trying to put the pieces together. “But who hired—”

“Your parents, obviously,” Grandpa said. “I bet he’s been following us the whole damn trip.”

Relief swept over me like it had been dumped on my head. I should’ve known our parents were looking out for us. They had been the whole time.

And I bet Eddie was just as relieved as I was. He looked as surprised as I was to learn Calvin was a private investigator, but that didn’t stop him from throwing a jab at me.

“Duh,” he said. “I can’t believe you didn’t see him.”

Grandpa didn’t stop for another thirty minutes or so—long enough for us to get far away from any interstate, business, or even another human being. Calvin was right behind us, not even trying to hide that he was following us. By the time Grandpa pulled over, it felt like we were at the end of the earth.

I don’t remember who got out first; I just remember Grandpa and Calvin facing each other between the cars. Eddie and Portia and I were pressed up against the back window. The van had those windows with a latch and they pushed out a few inches. Eddie opened one a little so we could hear.