A Song for the Road by Kathleen Basi (classic literature books txt) 📕

you. None of this is your …” business, she thought, but what she said was “ problem. Go home. Go to your kids’ soccer matches.”

Jo was tempted; it was clear that the prospect of driving across the country together appealed to her no more than it did to Miriam. “Well, you sound more with-it than I expected,” Jo said grudgingly. “So I guess I’ll let you go. On one condition.”

Miriam held her temper. “What’s that?”

“You text me and Mom and Brad at least once a day until you’re home again.”

It was still an unnecessary oversight, but considering she probably should have been doing that all along, it seemed ungracious to refuse.

The sun disappeared again. Miriam looked up; it seemed to be out for the count. A tumbleweed skittered across the street and past them, like something out of a spaghetti western.

She looked back at Jo. “All right,” she said.

Jo blew out a breath, looking toward her rental car. “I wish you had called me back so I didn’t have to waste the time and money coming out here,” she grumbled. “Now I have to go explain to the rental car place why I’m turning in a car I just checked out.”

Miriam pinched her lips shut on the apology that tried to worm its way out. She hadn’t asked Jo to come. It wasn’t her fault.

“Bye, Jo,” she said.

“C’mere.” Jo reached in and gave her a brusque hug. “Take care of yourself. Let us know when you get there. Wherever ‘there’ is.”

“Pikes Peak,” Miriam said, touched despite herself. “And you too.”

She headed for the car, where Dicey was sitting in the passenger seat with the door open to take advantage of the stiff breeze.

“You carried the day, then?” Dicey asked with an impish smile.

Miriam returned it. “I think we’re working on understanding each other.”

“Good for you,” Dicey said, closing the door.

Miriam fastened her seatbelt. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and pulled out toward a highway that stretched as far as she could see beneath an endless, glowering sky.

Part 7

Colorado

The things that we love tell us what we are.

—Thomas Aquinas

Blaise’s intro to Pikes Peak

Yeah, I know. We’ve been keeping you off the beaten path till now. But, I mean—Pikes Peak! You can’t skip that on any road trip across America. You remember that trip we took to Colorado with the gifted program in middle school? This was my favorite part. If the weather’s clear, from the top you can see five states. So no matter what coin flips you take, you’ll cross Colorado Springs. Anyway, I only have two words for you: high-altitude donuts.

(Talia’s voice, sotto voce): That’s three words, numb nuts!

 29

Thursday, May 5

Pawnee National Grasslands, eastern Colorado

THE SIMPLEST ROUTE TO Colorado Springs—not the shortest, but Miriam was sick of impersonal interstate highways—took them on a straight shot south, pretty much forever, on US 71. Miriam drove in solitude, Dicey’s long night finally having caught up to her. The younger woman slept in the passenger’s seat, using her backpack for a pillow, leaving Miriam to ponder the unexpected insight she’d just gained into her family.

What if their most annoying characteristics were actually how they expressed love?

Last spring, her family had swept in, picking up the burden she didn’t know she couldn’t carry. Mom stayed for months. Brad flew up to San Francisco to identify the bodies and bring them back to Atlanta. Jo paid the funeral expenses and never said a word. Miriam didn’t even know until months later, when she called the funeral home because she realized she’d never received a bill.

Miriam hated owing Jo. She wanted desperately to repay her, but she couldn’t, so she never said anything. Neither did Jo. For a year, the knowledge of the debt had weighed on her heart alongside everything else, smarting, irritating her. She wished she’d thought of it a few hours ago. For the first time, she felt ready to thank rather than berate her sister.

She woke Dicey when she pulled off for gas at the I-80 interchange. The guy smoking a cigarette outside the gas station set the younger woman to coughing like Miriam hadn’t seen in days. When she finally recovered, Dicey glowered and muttered about people disrespecting the gift of their lungs.

Miriam texted her family and Becky: 20 mi to the CO border. A round of thumbs-up emojis followed in short order.

Miriam had been counting on Dicey’s company now that she’d had a nap, but Dicey went right back to sleep. Miriam looked over periodically, noting uneasily the pallor of her companion’s face and the increasing persistence of the cough.

But her worry about Dicey soon gave way to another, more immediate concern. A couple dozen miles into Colorado, Miriam began to eye the hunkering clouds with trepidation. The wind seemed determined to blow her right off the highway. She checked her phone, but the signal strength wasn’t sufficient to bring up her weather app. The sky grew darker by the moment. Then came the rain: first a drizzle, then a steady downpour and finally a deluge, given structure by lightning the likes of which she’d never seen. She slowed down.

At four thirty in the afternoon, the world outside the window looked like twilight. Miriam crept down the highway, hoping to spot a place to get under cover, but she could see nothing. No homes, no businesses, no gas stations, no trees. Just endless miles of prairie grass whipping in the frenzied storm. Come to think of it, she hadn’t passed a business in … had she seen one since crossing the Colorado border?

A gust of wind pushed the Hyundai into the wrong lane; Miriam jerked it back. She cast her mind backward, searching for some explanation for the isolation, and landed on a brown sign she’d read without processing, preoccupied by the giant wind turbines behind it, not far south of the state line: “Pawnee National Grassland.”

National grassland. Did that mean a nature preserve? The kind with no development at all?

And then, both phones erupted