Page 49 of Anywhere with You
“I care about you all the time. I’m just not often so far away that I can’t help if I need to.”
Dad blew a raspberry into the phone. “We don’t need you, kiddo.”
“I know,” I said, and I mostly meant it. Usually, they only needed me for tech support, and not often even for that. They were still young and fit, for parents, but that didn’t mean that I was ignorant of the way they were aging.
“Hey, I learned a cool trick. I’ll show you when you visit, but the gist is, whenever your mother starts getting on my nerves, I turn on a cricket game, and she goes away within five minutes. I found one of those TV apps that’s twenty-four hour cricket, seven days a week cricket. It’s magic.”
“That’s a pretty cool trick,” I admitted. “Do you actually like cricket?”
“I like it a lot now that it gets me out of lectures about my blood pressure. How does she think yelling at me is going to help with my blood pressure, exactly?” He snorted a laugh.
“She’s a mystery.”
“She’s a…a beautiful woman. Majestic. And wise.”
“Hi, Mom,” I said, loud enough that I knew she’d be able to hear.
“Here,” Dad said. “Talk to your daughter. She’s screeching like someone stepped on her tail.”
There was a rustle of movement, then Mom’s voice. “Why are you torturing your poor father? Don’t you know that’s my job?”
Dad said, “Hah!” from the background.
Badger yipped in solidarity. My heart squeezed pathetically at the sound.
“Yes, she misses you, too,” Mom said, ostensibly to the dog. “Are you tired of driving yet?” she asked me.
“Very,” I said, watching Cara lean against the car with her hand on the pump. “But it’s been worth it.”
We chatted for a minute about the Grand Canyon and Mom’s garden. She had never seen the Grand Canyon, but she had read about it extensively since she heard I was going there and had almost as many facts to give me as Cara. She also couldn’t wait until I was back home so she could give me a whole bagful of weird kinds of cucumbers from her garden, and I pretended to want them.
Maybe Cara liked cucumbers and could take them off my hands.
Mom held Badger up to the phone so I could hear his snuffling breaths. Then we said good-bye.
I wasn’t used to feeling homesick. It took me a minute to identify the feeling.
Cara climbed back into the car, windswept and slightly sweaty. She grinned at me, and I very nearly reached over to smooth her hair. We’d become comfortable together, sharing the same space, but not that comfortable. Not that intimate.
She was lovely, though, with her curls a mess, like she’d just climbed out of bed after a very well-spent afternoon. Just like she’d been in my dream.
“What?” she asked.
“What?” I mimicked.
“You’re staring at me.”
“You’re staring at me,” I mimicked again, unable to come up with anything not stupid to say.
She had this lacy pocket on the front of her shirt, and I realized that she had a lot of clothes like that, with a hint of lace or embroidery here or there, sort of like an old lady, but in an utterly charming way.
I turned away quickly before she could accuse me of staring at her chest.
Some Puritan ancestor whispered in my head that she shouldn’t be so pretty. It was a temptation to sin.
Then I spent a lot of time thinking about what that would be like, sinning with Cara Espinoza.
Thick gray clouds filled the sky as we headed out of town, making the day so dark that we had to depend on the headlights to see the road ahead. Fat raindrops spattered with an unreasonably loud sound, as though they had been hurled down from the sky instead of just falling.
