"I'm a better athlete than Phoebe," she said.
Kevin shuddered. "The guys are still talking about the last time she played softball at the Stars picnic."
Molly hadn't been there, but she could imagine.
He swung into the left lane and said, with an edge, "I wouldn't think spending a few weeks every summer at some rich-kid's camp damaged you too much."
"I suppose you're right."
Except she never went for a few weeks. She went all summer, every summer, from the time she was six.
When she'd been eleven, there was a measles outbreak and all the campers were sent home. Her father had been furious. He couldn't find anyone to stay with her, so he'd been forced to take her with him to Vegas, where he'd set her up in a suite separate from his own with a change girl as a babysitter, even though Molly kept telling him she was too old for one. During the day the girl watched the soaps, and at night she crossed the hall to sleep with Bert.
They'd been the best two weeks of Molly's childhood. She'd read the complete works of Mary Stewart, ordered cherry cheesecake from room service, and made friends with the Spanish-speaking maids. Sometimes she'd announce to her sitter that she was going down to the pool, but instead, she'd wander around near the casino until she found a family with a lot of kids. Then she'd stay as close as she could and pretend she belonged to them.
Normally, the memories of her childish attempts to create a family made her smile, but now she felt another prickle of tears and swallowed. "Have you noticed there's a speed limit?"
"Making you nervous?"
"You should be, but I'm numb from too many years of riding with Dan." Besides, she didn't care that much. It shocked her-the realization that she had no interest in the future. She couldn't even muster the energy to worry about her finances or the fact that her editor at Chik had stopped calling.
He backed off on the accelerator. "Just so you know, the campground is in the middle of nowhere, the cottages are so old they're probably in ruins by now, and the place is more boring than elevator music because nobody under the age of seventy ever goes there." He tilted his head toward the sack of food he'd picked up at the service station. "If you're done with that orange juice, there are some cheese crackers inside."
"Yummy, but I think I'll pass."
"You seem to have passed on a lot of meals lately."
"Thanks for noticing. I figure if I lose another sixty pounds, I might be as skinny as some of your chères amies."
"Feel free to concentrate on that nervous breakdown of yours. At least it'll keep you quiet."
She smiled. One thing she'd say for Kevin, he didn't handle her with kid gloves like Phoebe and Dan. It was nice to be treated as an adult. "Maybe I'll just take a nap instead."
"You do that."
But she didn't sleep. Instead, she closed her eyes and tried to make herself think about her next book, but her mind refused to take a single step into the cozy byways of Nightingale Woods.
After they got off the interstate, Kevin stopped at a roadside store with a smokehouse attached and returned carrying a brown paper bag that he tossed into her lap. "Michigan lunch. Do you think you can make some sandwiches?"
"Maybe if I concentrate."
Inside she found a generous piece of smoked whitefish, a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese, and a loaf of dark pumpernickel bread, along with a plastic knife and a few paper napkins. She mustered enough energy to put together two crude, open-faced sandwiches for him and a smaller one for herself, all but a few bites of which she ended up feeding to Roo.
They headed east toward the middle of the state. Through half-closed eyes she saw orchards coming into bloom and neat farms with silos. Then, as the afternoon light began to fade, they made their way north toward I-75, which stretched all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.
They didn't talk much. Kevin listened to the CDs he'd brought with him. He liked jazz, she discovered, everything from forties bebop to fusion. Unfortunately, he also liked rap, and after fifteen minutes of trying to ignore Tupac's views of women, she hit the eject button, grabbed the disk, and tossed it out the car window.
His ears turned red, she discovered, when he yelled.
It was getting dark when they reached the northern part of the state. Just beyond the pretty town of Grayling they left the freeway for a two-lane highway that seemed to lead nowhere. Before long they were driving through dense woods.
"Northeastern Michigan was nearly stripped of timber by the lumber industry during the 1800s," he said. "What you're seeing now is second- and third-growth forest. Some of it is pretty wild. Towns in this area are small and scattered."
"How much farther?"
"Only a little over an hour, but the place is run-down, so I don't want to get there after dark. There's supposed to be a motel not far from here, but don't expect the Ritz."
Since she couldn't imagine him worrying about the dark, she suspected he was stalling, and she curled deeper into the seat. The headlights of an occasional oncoming car flickered across his features, casting dangerous shadows beneath those male underwear model cheekbones. She felt a shiver of foreboding, so she closed her eyes and pretended she was alone.
She didn't open them again until he pulled up in front of an eight-unit roadside motel made of white aluminum siding and fake brick. As he got out of the car to register, she thought about making sure he understood that she wanted a separate unit, but common sense intervened.
Sure enough, he returned from the office with two keys. His unit, she noticed, was at the opposite end from hers.
Early the next morning she awakened to door pounding and poodle barking. "Slytherins," she grumbled. "This is getting to be a bad habit."
"We're leaving in half an hour," Kevin called from the other side. "Get the lead out."
"Hut, hut," she muttered into her pillow.
She dragged herself into the cramped shower and even managed to run a comb through her hair. Lipstick, however, was beyond her. She felt as if she had a colossal hangover.
When she finally emerged, he was pacing near the car. The lemony patch of sunlight that splashed over him revealed a grim mouth and unfriendly expression. As Roo took advantage of the shrubbery, Kevin grabbed her suitcase and tossed it into the back of the car.
Today he'd decorated his muscles with an aqua Stars T-shirt and light gray shorts. They were ordinary clothes, but he wore them with the confidence of those who were born beautiful.
She fumbled in her purse for her sunglasses, then glared at him resentfully. "Don't you ever turn it off?"
"Turn what off?"
"Your basic ugliness," she muttered.
"Maybe I should just drop you off at a funny farm instead of taking you to Wind Lake."
"Whatever. Is coffee too much to hope for?" She shoved on her glasses, but they didn't do a whole lot to shut out the blinding glare of his irritating beauty.
"It's in the car, but it took you so long to get ready that it's probably cold by now."
It was piping hot, and as they pulled back out onto the road, she took a long, slow sip.
"Fruit and doughnuts were the best I could do for breakfast. They're in that bag." He sounded as grouchy as she felt. She wasn't hungry, and she concentrated on the scenery.
They might have been in the wilds of the Yukon instead of a state that made Chevrolets, Sugar Pops, and soul music. From a bridge crossing the Au Sable River she saw rocky cliffs rising on one shore and dense woods stretching on the other. An osprey soared down over the water. Everything seemed wild and remote.