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  “Then why are you on this weird-ass road trip? She’s hiding something, I can tell.”

  Victoria’s stomach clenched. “R-road trip? How . . . how do you . . . what makes you think that?”

  Another sigh. “Oh, baby girl. For fuck’s sake. You’re carrying an iPhone on a plan in Daddy’s name. You’re driving a BMW he owns. Do you really think he doesn’t know where you are at every minute of every day? Oh, and Mom’s alternate theory is drugs. I think she’s been binge-watching Intervention.”

  “No, not drugs.” Victoria’s face was numb, her lips icy and tingling. God, she’d been so stupid. No, ignorant. Layers and layers of ignorance, and just when she thought she was getting to the core, she looked around and saw she had barely dented the surface of the . . . life onion, or whatever people meant when they talked about layers all the time. “Hey, what’s that thing where you’re so stupid you don’t even know how stupid you are? It has a name . . . something hyphenated?”

  “Oh my God, your jackrabbit brain. Creatives. Are you talking about the Dunning-Kruger effect?”

  “Yes!”

  “You don’t have that. That’s people without skills thinking they do have skills. You have some skills, but you have . . . unconscious incompetence or something. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. Vic, what is Mom hiding and why are you calling me at . . . God, I can’t believe these people are still in my conference room. I was going to say at work, but probably you thought I would be at home by now, like a normal person.”

  Victoria rubbed her lips, fleetingly wondering when she’d last washed her face or put on lip gloss. Her skin felt dry, her lips chapped. “I called to ask if I can stay at your place for a few days once I get to town the day after tomorrow. Only until I find a job and have a chance to talk to some friends, see if somebody’ll let me couch surf for a bit. Oh, and if you and Paul still have the truck, could I . . . borrow it or rent it or something for a little while?”

  A voice called in the background of Alexandra’s phone, no more distinct than the Peanuts grown-up voice. Wah-wah-wah-wah-waaaah.

  Alexandra answered the voice. “Rashid, just tell everybody to take a ten, okay? We’ll reconvene at eight-thirty. Vic? I’m skipping the part where you’re apparently coming back to Dallas and living like a drifter. Tell me now whatever it is that our parents haven’t been telling me. Because I have had a very long day and I don’t have time for this. If I can help you I will, but I need you to cut to the chase.”

  Victoria didn’t blame her. Nobody ever had time for it. She swallowed, took a deep breath, then spilled. “I overheard Daddy calling me the black hole where his money goes and saying I was too dumb to realize I was supposed to be trolling the Brown campus for a husband. So I cut up my bank card and withdrew from school. I’ve been working as a barista to cover expenses and I thought I had it all under control, but a few days ago my boss told me I had to blow him to keep the job, so I quit. Then I realized I’d already talked the landlord into letting me out of the lease. And Providence is tiny and expensive and really, really cold. And Dallas is big and cheap and warm, and I know people there with pool houses and garage apartments I could maybe stay in. Plus, I need to give the car back to Daddy anyway. So I just . . . hit the road.”

  “Jesus. Okay. Okay, so . . . okay. God. Are you all right? Physically, from the thing with your boss?”

  “Yeah. He didn’t really touch me. I mean, he tried to put my hand on his dick. Mostly he was just an asshole.”

  “No. That isn’t just being an asshole. That is sexual assault. Did you report it to anybody?”

  “No,” Victoria admitted. “Well, except kind of the other employees, as I was leaving. Including his girlfriend, apparently. Who I think will probably tell his wife.”

  “Ooh. All right. We probably have some time . . . I’ll research the laws and statutes for Rhode Island. You should definitely get some therapy about that or a support group or something. Meanwhile . . . ugh, I can’t even get to the main thing. There are so many layers of men being dicks in this situation.”

  “I know,” Victoria commiserated. “We both knew Daddy could be . . . well, kind of a sexist frat bro, let’s face it.”

  Alexandra snort-laughed. “Jeez, Vic. Okay. Fair enough. He’s a type, for sure. He’s ethical at least, I’ll give him that one.”

  “For sure. But it did catch me off guard to be . . . okay, I wasn’t surprised to hear him being a misogynist, I just never expected to hear it aimed at me. It threw me.” She ran her fingers through her hair and realized that was overdue for a wash, too. “I acted hastily and in anger, and it was probably stupid.”

  “No probably about it. It was absolutely stupid. You had one semester left and all your bills were being paid. Do you have any idea how fucking lucky you were to have that?”

  “I’m starting to. I think I have a way to go yet.”

  “I . . .” Alexandra paused, and Victoria could hear tapping. Fingers on a keyboard, absurdly fast. “Of course you can come to my place. I’m going to look into some things. I have to go, though. What time will you get here, do you think?”

  Victoria smirked. “Couldn’t you just ask Daddy?”

  “Touché. Are you going to call them? They’re really worried.”

  “I texted Mom. I can’t . . . do more than that right now. I just can’t. And I should be there sometime between lunch and dinner. It depends when I leave that morning. I’m hoping to make Memphis by tomorrow night, so I’ll be heading out from there.”

  “Okay, kiddo. Paul should be at the house, so he’ll make sure you have something to eat and set you up in the guest room. He may be out picking up the kids, but he’s usually back home with them by four.”

  Paul, Alexandra’s husband, was a political blogger who worked from home.

  “I’ll time my arrival accordingly.” Victoria revived her laptop screen, traced her finger over the trackpad, then pulled up She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown again, hitting pause before it could restart. “And thank you so much.”

  “Okay. I have to go, I have several testy Norwegians and Brits in my conference room. Not to mention the locals.”

  “What you get for picking oil and gas law. See you day after tomorrow, Alex.”

  “It chose me. But I think that may work out in your favor, with what I have in mind. G’night, Vic.”

  She hung up before explaining her last, cryptic remark.

  Victoria put her phone facedown on the table, sliding it behind the laptop so she wouldn’t see it if it lit up again. She had run out of mental energy to even wonder what Alex was talking about. She rattled the ice in the bottom of her ridiculously large Value soda, dug for the last few bits of French fry, and hit Play.

  * * *

  Victoria had grand plans to fuel her entire drive’s caffeine requirement the next day with one small Styrofoam cup of free coffee from the motel room coffeemaker; that didn’t even get her out of Lexington. She found the closest open drive-through, bought a big cup of the cheap stuff, and loaded it with all the sugar and cream the guy at the window would give her. Cost-effective and filling. Forty-five minutes later, at the inevitable rest stop, she got to appreciate the sunrise from a nearby scenic overlook.

  It was a long haul to Memphis, and in some ways the reverse of the previous day’s drive. Mile upon mile of thinly populated Appalachian wrinkles, finally giving way to relatively flatter land with a lot more concrete and cars.

  That night, unable to face another “value” meal, she pulled into a grocery store before settling on a motel. The past month had taught her the beauty of the clearance aisle, and after she’d grabbed some peanut butter, crackers, and a box of store-brand granola cereal, she spotted the best find of all: a rack of cheap, oversized insulated mugs, half off their original low price. Three bucks. If she’d gotten one before leaving Providence, it would’ve already paid for itself.

  She snagged one that read “Memphis, Home of the Blues.” Would it leak? Probably.

&
nbsp; But she only had one important question for the motel clerk when she walked up to the desk. “Is there complimentary coffee and a coffeemaker in every room?”

  There was indeed. Victoria had to stifle the urge to fist-pump as she paid for the night.

  This time she checked for bedbugs before bringing her stuff in. She counted it another small victory, or at least the absence of a failure, which seemed to be her new standard.

  Chapter 4

  Victoria was worn out from her road trip by the time she finally hit Dallas. If she’d been a bit more alert when Alexandra got home from work, she might have asked her sister about the plan she’d fleetingly mentioned on the phone. As it was, exhausted and emotionally bruised, Victoria spent most of their evening unloading about her past month or so, especially about the incident with Larry. Then she fell asleep on the couch in midsentence and didn’t budge until the smell of coffee woke her the next morning.

  Fortunately, Alexandra had been able to shift some meetings and get the day free. The Beemer made amazing time between Dallas and the little town of Bolero, where Alex swore Victoria would be able to chill, regroup, and figure things out in her own time. In a quiet, bucolic setting where the guys looked like cowboys and probably wouldn’t act like douche canoes.

  Victoria was experiencing some déjà vu on the half-day drive across central Texas. The landscape was different, but the navigation was the same: pick a road—in this case, I-35—and stay on it until your eyes were about to cross from boredom. At least she had company this time. “But aren’t most cowboys a little bit . . . I mean, it’s not like I haven’t known plenty. They’re great on old-school chivalry, but it’s not the group I’d associate with deep respect for women in the modern, feminist fashion, you know?”

  “They aren’t real cowboys. Have you been listening at all?”

  “Honestly, not until about eight? Before that you’re lucky I kept the car in the lane and stayed more or less awake.”

  “God. Why didn’t you just ask me to drive?”

  “Too sleepy to think of it.” She slid to one side of a semi, racing up the left lane to get ahead of it, then eased back into the right lane, appreciating the responsiveness of the steering. She would miss the car’s handling, the smell of the leather seats, the ergonomics. But Alex had implied there would be vehicles she could borrow at—what was it called? Hilltop? “Fine. Tell me again where we’re going and why I can’t just stay at your place?”

  “Will you listen this time?”

  “I’ll give it my best shot.”

  Alex sighed—her hard-put-upon sigh. She sounded a lot like her six-year-old daughter, Piper. “It’s a guest ranch. Like a dude ranch. But they’ve only started up again the past year or so, and there are cabins that aren’t ready for hotel guests yet, aren’t up to code or standards or whatever. I don’t know. Mindy said they had a place you could stay as long as you liked, to figure things out. Um, except for one weekend a month, when there’s a big private event at the ranch or something. But apparently you can house-sit at her place in town on those weekends. ‘Town’ being Bolero.”

  “Mindy’s the friend who’s also an oil and gas lawyer, right? Or . . . wait, no, not a lawyer.”

  “She was a landman.”

  “She? Was a . . . huh?”

  “A landman. It’s just what the job is called, Vic. It’s an oil-and-gas thing, okay?” Alex slurped at her tea ungracefully; their mother would have tsked in disapproval. “So that’s how I knew her. But she went up to Hilltop for a weekend and it turned out she’d gone to school with the owner—who isn’t a cowboy or a rancher, he’s a former petroleum engineer, so basically a nerd in redneck clothing. They fell in love, she quit a job she hated, moved to his ranch, happily ever after. Now she helps him run the place. There’s horseback riding, nature hikes, even camping. We’ve come up a few times with Piper. She loves the place.”

  “Do you and Paul camp?”

  “Oh fuck no. Are you insane? We get one of the fancy cabins.”

  Victoria glanced at a road sign, then at the gas gauge. They had over a quarter tank, so they should be fine as long as Alex remembered to fill up before starting back to Dallas from wherever in the boonies this town turned out to be.

  When Victoria had started to unload her car the night before, Alex had stopped her. “Don’t bother. We’d just be packing it into another car, then unpacking it when we get there. I’ll drive the Beemer back to the city and get it to Daddy, don’t worry.”

  Alex’s plan, as far as Victoria could make out, was for Victoria to hang out at this Hilltop Ranch place, chill for a while, figure out her next steps, possibly get some therapy. And it would be far enough away from Dallas that their parents wouldn’t be in her face the whole time, asking questions. Or, more to the point, Victoria suspected, wouldn’t be at Alex’s place all the time pestering both of them. But that was fine. Victoria didn’t mind some distance. If she had to venture into San Antonio to find a job, she’d need a vehicle, but Alex had made it sound like that wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Okay. It does sound like a great place to get my head together. But what about when I come back to Dallas?”

  Alexandra sipped her tea, then made a production of consulting the GPS on her phone. As if they weren’t on the same road they’d been on for the past four hours and wouldn’t be on it for quite a bit longer before they had to do anything resembling navigation. “I think,” she said at last, “you should focus on yourself. Don’t worry about a deadline for getting back. Take your time to work things out and get your finances in order. Or . . . whatever.”

  That would have sounded supportive and reasonable if she hadn’t taken so long to say it; as it was, Victoria’s neck prickled with unease. “Okay.”

  “See the signs for Loop 1604? We’ll be taking that exit, so head’s up.”

  “Oh.” Sooner than she’d expected, somehow. “We aren’t even to San Antonio yet.”

  “We swing north of town. Hopefully avoiding some traffic, but we’ll see. Google Maps says it’s green, but one wreck and that’s shot to shit.”

  “Thanks again for setting all this up.” Victoria was still stunned with relief at having a little time to figure out what to do next without being practically in her parents’ backyard.

  “Don’t thank me yet.” Alexandra swirled the remainder of her tea in the cup lid, then swigged it back and reached for a tissue from the box on the floor to swipe it dry before replacing it on the vacuum flask.

  That prickle up the spine again. “And . . . why not?”

  “Oh, you know. Just . . . rustic accommodations. Scorpions, probably. Definitely some massive spiders.”

  “Ah. Great. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.”

  “That’s true. Literally.” Shifting in her seat to face Victoria, Alex sighed and gave her an earnest look. “And you should remember that once we get there, okay?”

  What the actual fuck? Exactly how big were those spiders? But . . . Alex had gone out of her way to arrange this, had even taken the day to make the drive with her little sister. “I’ll remember.”

  “Good.” Alex turned front again and pointed at a road sign on the next overpass, tapping the roof as they swept under it. “That’s 1604. Get over to the far-right lane.”

  Victoria changed lanes, scanning the stores on the feeder road as she glanced behind her to check the blind spot. “Hey, look, a Spec’s. Can we stop?” Not that she had any extra money to spend on liquor, but she had a sneaking suspicion that at some point in the next few hours she might be in the mood for a shot of something mind-numbing.

  Alexandra treated it as the rhetorical question it probably should have been. Victoria kept driving, wishing she knew what awaited her at her destination.

  * * *

  Ethan had only planned to stay at Hilltop long enough to exercise Sackett, let his dog Roxie have a good run, then head back to work. He was on call, technically, but Trudy had Marguerite handy to assist if anything came u
p. The practice’s prospective new addition had shown up bright and early that morning and seemed to be making herself right at home.

  Turning Sackett back toward the barn after a quick loop around the hilltop trail, Ethan decided on a brief detour. He angled the horse in the direction of his tiny house build site and dismounted near what would soon be the front deck. A fine old pecan tree was perfectly positioned to shade the area when the summer days were hottest; now, in February, there was still a bit of a glare in the afternoons. But he could already feel the potential. He couldn’t wait to have the deck complete, to sit outside his own front door of an evening and watch the sun go down.

  He slid off Sackett and let the reins down, ground tying the horse, then circled the house and satisfied himself everything was secure. The coppery roof and new solar panel frames reflected the sunlight, as did the white moisture wrap around the sections of the exterior that hadn’t been sided yet. He hadn’t made as much progress lately as he’d hoped; now, maybe he’d have more time to work on it. It might even be done before the hot weather really kicked in.

  Leaning against the side of the house, he indulged in a deep sniff of the old cedar he’d already placed along one wall. The smell was strongest along the new cuts, but even the weathered sections were faintly aromatic, and it was a good smell. Wholesome, authentic. Like something homey and built to last. He reached out and rubbed his hands along the rough surface, knowing the smell would linger on his skin. Even half-completed, the house was starting to feel like his place. Everything felt like it was clicking into alignment, the whole universe going Ethan’s way.

  Roxie, sniffing around the trailer’s base, suddenly lifted her head and pricked her ears, her compact black-and-white form going instantly into alert mode. A few seconds later, Ethan heard what seemed to have set her off: raised voices carried on the fitful breeze. Licking his forefinger and raising it, he tested the wind’s direction before it could die down again. The yelling had come from the main house, apparently. Good to know his secluded hilltop grove channeled sound from that area. He might have to move to another spot if he wanted peace and quiet.