I glanced down at the time I’d set on my phone. “She said she only needs seven minutes.” I wasn’t sure she was going to make it, since she was still running around the store and she had only three minutes left.
“I’ll take that action,” my dad said, raising his eyebrows at me.
“You think she can’t do it?” I asked, as we both watched Toby come to a standstill, apparently distracted by the magazine display.
“If she can’t, I get to pick what we watch on Sunday,” my dad said. “If she can, it’s your pick.” I looked at Toby, who was back in motion, and nodded.
“Deal.” We shook on it, and I looked back at the mini-mart, willing Toby to move faster. My dad and I had fallen into the habit of having lazy, stay-around-the-house Sundays. We usually seemed to both wind up in my dad’s study, where I’d pretend to read my textbooks and he’d pretend to read his latest historical biography while we basically just watched TV all day. Last week my dad had decided to be proactive about it, and had DVR’d a John Wayne marathon. I’d rolled my eyes, but it actually hadn’t been that bad, though I was looking forward to getting him back with a marathon of my own.
I glanced down at the countdown clock on my phone, then turned it over, knowing if I didn’t I’d just stare at it the whole time. I leaned back in my seat and looked around, suddenly realizing where we were—at the mini-mart almost on the Hartfield border. I glanced over at my dad, wondering for a second if he knew. My mom had always said it was our secret, but I was a kid then, so I’d never actually been sure.
I took a breath, then said, “Did Mom ever tell you we used to come here?”
My dad just looked at me. “Where?” he asked, sounding confused. “The gas station?”
“Not really,” I said, closing my eyes for just a second and remembering. My mom gently shaking me awake, the smile on her face as I struggled to bring her into focus. “Andie,” she’d whisper. “Want to go have an adventure?”
“It was when you were working in D.C.,” I said, the words coming slowly. I’d never talked about this to anyone before. It had been something just between my mother and me, all those magical nights where time seemed to stop, and for a little while it was like we were the only people awake in the world, like the stars were shining for us alone. “I never knew when it was going to happen. She said it was when life was getting too ordinary.”
“That sounds like her,” my dad said, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, his voice quiet.
“She’d wake me up,” I said, smiling just remembering it, how it somehow felt exciting just to be out and driving around in a car in my cupcake pajamas. “We’d drive all over in the Mustang with the top down. And we’d always end up here.”
We both sat quietly for a moment, looking into the window of the store, as Toby wandered down an aisle, stopped, consulted the list, then started moving again.
“We used to get candy and hot chocolate,” I said, remembering what it had been like to drive home, the wind whipping though my hair and my hands around the warm paper cup. “She always said that it was something you didn’t necessarily need to know about.”
“I’m glad you told me,” my dad said, his voice still quiet, a tiny hitch in the back of it somewhere. We weren’t looking at each other now; we were both looking straight ahead, and I knew that was making it easier. “She really could make anything magical, couldn’t she?”
I nodded. It was one of the things I’d taken for granted when it was just my life, but now that it was gone I could see how amazing and rare it had been. “She could,” I said, still looking ahead, feeling my throat get tight. “It’s like anything could be an adventure, even just driving around in pajamas.”
“You know how much she loved you, right?” my dad asked, and two tears fell down, one from each of my eyes, without me even realizing they were going to. “She thought you hung the moon. She’d be so proud of you.”
I brushed the back of my hand over my face and took a shaky breath. “Yeah?” I asked, thinking that she probably would have been—with my grades, and my goals, and my other summers full of productive things.
“Absolutely,” my dad said, his voice still cracking a little. “This thing with the dogs? She would have loved that. She would have done a series of oil paintings of them all by now.”
I gave a laugh at that with half a sob mixed in, because I could see in that moment just how true it was. My mother would have loved that I was outside all day, that I was having fun. I would have come home every day and told her about the canine misadventures, and she would have done different voices for every dog. “What happened to the Mustang?” I asked after we’d sat in silence for a moment, even though it didn’t feel like bad silence—it just felt filled up.
“I’m not sure,” my dad said, looking down at the steering wheel. “I could find out if you want.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “That’d be good.”
“Here!” The backseat door was flung open and Toby tumbled inside, carrying two overstuffed plastic bags. The inside lights flared on and it suddenly seemed very bright. I leaned forward, brushing my hand over my face again, hoping it wasn’t totally obvious that I’d been crying. “I’m here. Did I make it?”
“Oh,” I said, turning over my phone to look at the timer. I had totally forgotten about it. I’d forgotten, frankly, about the scavenger hunt. “Um, no. Missed it by a minute and a half.” I looked at my dad, who was starting the car with a grin. Now that I was getting pulled out of this moment I’d had with my dad, it was all coming back to me—the side bet we’d placed on Toby, which meant he got to choose our next movie. “Just no more John Wayne?”
“I make no promises,” he said. He turned and looked at me, gave me a small smile, and I gave him one back, and even though we weren’t technically speaking, it felt like we were saying the same thing. Then he put the car in gear and pulled away from the mini-mart.
Sixteen minutes later he screeched to a stop, pulling to the side of the street in front of the Winthrop statue. “We made it,” he said, exhaling and shooting me a smile across the car.
“Let’s move, people,” Toby said, clapping her hands and then scrambling to pick up the items that were scattered all over the backseat. “Andie, can you see anyone? Did everyone else beat us here?”
“I see the guys,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and leaning forward to look. While we’d been gone, Palmer had clearly been busy—the picnic table was now divided into three sections, and she’d put signs up, marking which team each section belonged to. Clark and Tom were setting up a truly impressive pile of stuff, and I felt a twinge of alarm. From a distance, at least, it looked like we would be pretty evenly matched, if not behind them. “But I don’t see Bri or Wyatt anywhere.”
Toby stepped backward out of the car, hoisting an overstuffed canvas bag on each shoulder, and slammed the door closed with her foot. “I’ll get us started,” she said, already running toward the table. “Hurry!”
I grabbed my stuff and hustled out, shutting the door behind me. I started to follow Toby toward the picnic table, but then stopped and turned back to the car, where my dad was watching the proceedings through my open passenger-seat window. “Um,” I said, not really sure what to say. I suddenly wished this weren’t ending in just a few minutes. For a while there, it was like we’d been part of the same team. “Thanks,” I finally said, and my dad gave me a smile.
“Good luck,” he said, shifting the car into drive. “Just don’t stay out too late celebrating our victory.”