Page 9 of Joy
She might as well have said,Take a left at the big oak tree and make a right at the closest moose.
Seriously,just drive?
But I didn’t argue and left with the order. Eatery had its own delivery car, which was great, considering mine was still on the side of the road. I got in and turned on the radio before driving in the one direction of town I knew so far. There was an ad playing for John Deere tractors when I drove past the B&B and saw my piece of shit parked in the driveway.
“Yoo-hoo!” Bridget called from the front yard. She waved her garden glove at me, hurried toward the road, and crossed it as I rolled the window down. “Look at you. George has you running all over the place already, does he?”
“I’m off to find a bridge,” I answered.
“Oh, just keep driving this way for a while. You can’t miss it,” she explained, pointing down the stretch of road shaded by towering, ancient trees.
I nodded. “Will do. Hey, that’s my car. How did it get here?”
Bridget looked over her shoulder. “Tow truck dropped it off. You didn’t want it left on the side of the road forever, did you?”
“But who paid to have it towed?”
“Silas did,” she said, as if I were supposed to have known that.
“The guy I hit?” I clarified.
Bridget nodded. “Of course!”
“Why?”
Bridget slapped my arm lightly with the glove. “Because he’s a kind man. Anyway, you get going!” Bridget put her gardening gloves on and hurried back across the road.
I DIDfind The Bridge.
And during my whole drive there, I tried to figure out why that Silas guy would pay to have my car brought into town. That wasn’t cheap. Was he going to give me the bill for that too?
Bridget and Bernard seemed to think he was the bee’s knees, but were we talking about the same guy? I mean, the Silas I had briefly met was about as talkative as a brick wall. And as attractive as a ham sandwich. He wasn’t a total asshat, of course—hehaddriven me to a place that he likely knew would give me a discount during my stay—but…whatever.
I just needed to pay the guy and get on with my life.
I pulled onto the shoulder of the road, turned the car off, grabbed the bag, and climbed out. The sun overhead was bright, the air crisp and clean with the smell of fresh grass and flowers. The river just ahead roared loudly, as if the last several days had seen a lot of rain.
What river was it?
I was awful with geography.
I pulled my cell out and opened the Internet browser to find out, but my signal dropped down to one shaky bar and nothing would load.
Fuck. Are you kidding me?
I was maybe ten miles outside of Lancaster and the Internet ceased to exist?
“It’s all the mountains,” said a booming voice ahead of me.
I looked up quickly and found a huge guy grinning down at me. “S-sorry?”
“You ain’t got no signal out here because of all the mountains. Folks got satellite for home Internet service.”
“What happens if there’s bad weather?” I asked, shoving my phone into my pocket.
The guy just smiled wider, if that were possible. “No service.”
Not that I was in a committed relationship with my phone, but I preferred my feeds to load when opened.
