Around the Bend (21 page)

The next time I took a road trip to discover the truth about my late husband, I would go it alone.

Susan wasn’t a bad person, but the combination of Harvey and her in the car nearly drove me over the edge. Susan chattering, Harvey pacing and whining. I was used to being alone in my car, listening to the music I liked, the talk-radio programs that interested me, but as we moved farther from Boston, the reception got worse and Susan’s voice box revved up. She’d talked all through the night, making me regret letting her get a fifty-five-ounce Diet Coke at our last gas fill.

We’d stopped for fast food at one of the exits off of Route I-81 in Virginia. The place had been littered by ten million roadies before us, but Susan had assured me, one hand securely on my arm, that there couldn’t possibly be any airborne viruses in a place like that.

Probably because they’d all run for the hills, overcome by the grease fumes.

I’d gotten a cheeseburger, but opted to have us eat in the car—breaking one of my cardinal rules—after I saw a fly groom himself on a table in the apple-themed food court.

“Here’s a napkin,” I said once we were back in the car. “You might want to spread it out, like a tablecloth. There are wet wipes in the glove box, so you don’t get any grease on the door handles. Oh, and watch those little salt packets. They have a tendency to spray.”

“Here, Harvey,” Susan said, ignoring my housekeeping instructions and opening a six-piece box of chicken nuggets on the backseat of my Mercedes. Harvey dug in, as if he hadn’t already had his shot of Purina for the day. His little jaws made quick work of the nuggets, spraying brown confetti crumbs over the leather.

“Can you get him to stop that?” I asked. “He’s making a mess.”

“He’s a dog. He’s allowed.” Susan let out a sigh, her hundredth of the trip, then made a face at her window.

“This is a
Mercedes,
” I said, realizing as I said it how pretentious it sounded. Like it was okay to get processed chicken tidbits all over a Chevy, but not a Benz. I relaxed my white-knuckled hold on the steering wheel, drew in a breath, let it out, then decided it was going to be a hell of a long drive to Tennessee if I didn’t get a grip. “Never mind, I’m sure he’ll eat all the crumbs.”

He did just that, leaving a gooey white trail of doggy saliva on my seats in the process. Eww. I made a mental note to get the car reconditioned. Or better yet, call one of those crime-scene cleaners to erase all trace of dog.

The miles passed, with neither one of us talking. Harvey thrust his muzzle out the three inches of open window,
sniffing the air with an enthusiasm that bordered on cocaine snorting. Every once in a while, he’d let out a yip, as if he’d seen someone he knew, his tail beating a greeting against the backseat. Then he’d hop down, dance around the backseat, nudge at his backpack, hop back onto the armrest and start the process all over again. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear he was doing doggy aerobics.

I switched on the radio, but couldn’t get anything besides static. I watched the mile markers on I-81, which come every tenth of a mile, as if taunting me with how far I had yet to go, dread building in my stomach with each round number—261, 263, 268.

“Did you ever meet Vinny?” Bracing for the answer, I stiffened my spine and concentrated on the road—and not what lay at the end of it.

Because it sure as hell wasn’t a leprechaun and a nice little pot of gold.

“Vinny?” Susan thought a minute. “No, though I heard Dave talking to someone with that name a couple times, if that helps.”

A pang slammed into my chest, as sharp as a steak knife. Picturing Dave in her kitchen, or worse, her bedroom, sitting on the Sealy, lying against the pillows, talking on his cell. He’d have one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, and he’d be slumped a little, relaxed. If there was one thing Dave hadn’t been, it was high-strung.

“Apparently, he’s Harvey’s trainer,” I said.

“Oh.”

In five seconds, conversation had died, may it rest in peace and never be resurrected. Had I really thought I could spend
fifteen-plus hours in a car with a woman I didn’t know, and had nothing in common with—

Except a husband.

Susan fidgeted beside me, adjusting the strap of her purse in her lap, then the deep V at her neck. Susan had a way of dressing that was just a step above streetwalker and about five hundred steps away from me and my turtlenecks and St. John’s Bay suit jacket. I wondered if that was what Dave had needed, a little dash of Victoria’s Secret to keep my husband home. If I’d worn a V-neck instead of a turtleneck, would he have craved another woman?

I had to stop playing this guessing game. It certainly didn’t improve my mood.

“So, Penny, what’s the plan?” Susan asked me, pivoting in her seat as she did, her face now happy and bright, as if the whole thing was just oh-so exciting. Either she was putting on a good show because she was just as bored as I was, or she truly thought this was going to be one long pajama party.

“We go down to Tennessee, meet this Vinny, give him the dog and…” My voice trailed off.

“And find Annie?”

I turned and looked at Susan. “Do you
want
to find Annie?”

She sighed and, in that sound, I heard every emotion that had torn apart my heart in the past few days. Like it or not, the two of us were going through the same grieving, sharing the pain as if we were conjoined twins. “Not really. But I suppose we have to, don’t we?”

I wanted to say no, we didn’t. That we could leave Annie wherever she was in Podunk, U.S.A., and go back to our merry lives like nothing had happened. That we could dump the dog and run.

But the practical side of me knew if there was a will—which I had yet to find in my search through the house—insurance money, social security death benefits, then there were legalities to work out between the three of us.
If
there were three. Maybe Annie was Harvey’s breeder or dog food provider or something.

“This is kind of fun,” Susan said, resting one skinny bare arm on the door. “I’ve never been on a road trip before.”

Fun? She was having
fun?

“I haven’t traveled much, either.”

“Why not? You seem the…sophisticated type.”

“I’m an accountant,” I said, as if that was an explanation for everything.

“But don’t you have, like, accountant get-togethers where you discuss exciting things about taxes or whatever?”

I laughed, the sound bursting from my lungs so spontaneously I almost didn’t recognize it. It had been days since I’d laughed. Weeks, maybe. “Well, they do have conferences, but I’ve only been to one.”

“Why?”

“I don’t do well in strange places.”

“Oh.”

“I mean,” I hastened to add, in case it sounded as if I was some kind of an agoraphobic conference freak, “that a conference throws me off my schedule.”

“I don’t even own a watch,” Susan said, as if that should make total sense to me.

In a weird way, it did.

In the beginning of our marriage, Dave had asked me to travel, to go with him to conventions and client appointments in different cities. I’d tried it, once, and found the whole ex
perience so unnerving and so out of my control that I’d never gone again. I’d pleaded headaches, the flu, work deadlines—until Dave stopped asking.

Now I knew why. It hadn’t just been my reluctance that had made him quit inviting me along. He’d been hiding a life that he’d apparently decided I didn’t want to share.

If he’d asked one more time? If he’d told me…

What would I have said?

I already knew that answer. Hell, no, I didn’t want a dog that could pirouette. And a definite nix on the idea of trotting him around dog shows all over the country. I mean, we’d had a mortgage to pay, a lawn to mow, for Pete’s sake.

“Oh, look, hitchhikers!” Susan pointed at what was clearly a novelty to her, standing on the highway in the misty rain. “Let’s stop.”

“Haven’t you read Stephen King? Don’t you know the chances of us being maimed or robbed…or worse?”

Susan waved a hand in dismissal. “Oh, they look okay.”

I glanced at the couple by the side of the road as we neared them. A scrawny guy in jeans with long, unkempt brown hair standing beside a short, plump woman who was either pregnant or hiding an Uzi under her shirt. “No. We’re not picking them up.”

“Fine.” Susan pouted, then turned her face again toward the window, giving the couple a little wave as we drove past.

Mile marker 274. Tennessee had never seemed so far away.

If these miles didn’t start passing faster, or if Susan didn’t suddenly fall asleep in her seat, there was going to be a felony committed in this car. And it wouldn’t be at the hands of some nameless hitchhiker.

“Susan, listen, I—”

The Benz jerked to the right with a loud pop, cutting off my sentence. I gripped the wheel, struggling to pull the car back into the lane before we were creamed by a mint-green Honda Odyssey puttering along in the slow lane.

“Holy crap! What just happened?” Susan asked, her face deathly white.

“Flat tire.” Or at least, that’s what I assumed. I’d never had anything go wrong with the Benz. Dave had always taken care of maintenance and when one car wore out, he’d replaced it with another just like it, black, dependable. “I think.”

I slowed, waited for the Odyssey to go by, then pulled off the road, gravel spitting between my tires and dinging against the body. The Benz leaned to one side, sinking into the ground as if an elephant had taken over Susan’s spot.

I got out and walked around to the front of the car, feeling the whoosh of traffic passing by, lifting my hair and jacket, making them flap in the hurried sixty-five-miles-per-hour breeze. There was no mistaking what had happened. The tire on the passenger side had gone flatter than a sheet of cardboard.

“Do you know how to fix it?” Susan asked, climbing out of the car and standing beside me in her ridiculous heels, shoes that were definitely not designed for performing car maintenance.

“No. I know how to call Triple A, though.”

Susan looked disappointed, as if she’d paid her dollar for an adventure and was expecting me to provide one. I went back to the car, searching for my cell phone. It wasn’t in the ashtray/change dish. Not in the cup holder, not on the dash, not in my purse. I started feeling blindly along the carpet,
trying to ignore the French fry and nugget crumbs, then finally found it. Under Susan’s seat, the cover flipped open.

The battery was dead.

When had I gotten this distracted that I’d forget to recharge my cell? That I hadn’t even noticed it had bounced out of my purse? I couldn’t think of a single other time when I hadn’t been on top of everything, knowing exactly how to get from A to B.

And yet, I’d left this morning in a car with a woman who was a total stranger with nothing more than an overnight bag, a road atlas and a can of soda. I’d never done anything that unrehearsed, that unplanned.

At least not until my dearly beloved and stone-cold husband had thrown a big old roadblock into my life. A roadblock with impossible shoes and a tendency to talk at the worst time.

I cursed and tossed the useless cell onto the seat. It hit the hard surface of the armrest, bounced up and pinged into the backseat. Harvey let out a yip, then cowered in the corner.

And peed on the leather.

That was it. The last straw in a haystack that was already depleted. I started to cry, collapsing onto the driver’s seat in a useless heap. What was I thinking, driving this far? I could have just stayed in Newton, handing off the estate to some attorney who would tell Susan and Annie they’d get to split the dog and none of the things Dave and I had worked so hard to build together.

I didn’t want to hear that our entire life had been a group effort, that I had to triangulate my assets, as I had my husband.

Soon as the tire was fixed, I was turning around, heading back home. I didn’t want to know what Dave had been up
to. I didn’t want his damned dog. And I especially didn’t want his other damned wife.

“Penny?” Susan’s touch was light on my shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes.” Years of conditioning, of pretending everything was all right even as it crumpled around me, spit that word out on a sob.

“Don’t worry about the tire. Help has arrived.” She gestured beside her with a flourish, at the two hitchhikers I’d bypassed five minutes earlier.

They grinned at me. I gave them a watery, please-don’t-rob-us-and-leave-us-to-die-here smile back.

Somehow, given the circumstances lately, I had a feeling my luck wouldn’t be that good.

It turned out Norm, the scrawny guy, knew how to change a tire and pop off a wheel cover, but lacked the strength to get the lug nuts off, so he had his girlfriend stand on the tire iron. Apparently neither one of them cared that she was six months pregnant—something Norm proudly told me as his girlfriend lifted up her Penn State sweatshirt and displayed a big round belly with an outie that seemed a lot like a tongue sticking out at us.

“Are you sure she should be standing on that?” I asked Norm. I had finished cleaning the seat with the wet wipes, given Harvey the evil eye, then swiped the whole thing down again with the remaining napkins. What I wouldn’t have given for a little Lysol.

He shrugged. “Rita’s cool with it. Aren’t ya, baby?”

She beamed at him and gave the metal rod a little bounce. “Absolutely. I do it all the time in the garage where Norm used to work.”

“Where are you guys headed?” Susan asked after the kid—the closer I looked the more I realized Norm couldn’t be a
day over seventeen—finished jacking up, replacing, then jacking down.

“Dollywood,” his girlfriend answered for him. “Norm’s a country singer. A real good one, too. We’re headed there for this season’s
American Idol
tryouts. Norm’s gonna be a
star
.”

Her smile for him was so filled with adoration and hope that I didn’t have the heart to mention Norm’s chances of breaking onto the Billboard Top 100 were about nil. Particularly since he looked more like Charles Manson’s younger brother than Clint Black’s replacement.

“You’re all set,” Norm said. He swiped his greasy palms across his jeans, then stared at me expectantly.

“Uh…How much do you want?” I said, reaching for my purse, keeping it hidden behind the open door in case Norm and Rita got any ideas.

“Nothin’,” Rita popped in. “’Cept maybe a ride. Susan says you guys are going to Tennessee, too.”

I shot Susan a glare, but she ignored me. “We really can’t—”

“Get on in,” Susan said, ignoring me. “We could definitely use the company.”

Which meant she wasn’t having much more fun than I was. I said a quick prayer that neither one of them was a homicidal maniac, then slipped in behind the wheel. I did owe Norm, after all.

I pulled out onto the highway, easing into traffic, giving the tire a test before getting back up to full speed. Behind me, Harvey settled in between the two new passengers, sitting up and panting something that looked oddly like a smile.

“Oh, my God!” Rita shrieked.

“What? What?” I whipped my head around, trying to ease
across two lanes, back to the side of the road. Was she in labor? Had the wheel slipped off? Had Norm forgotten to reattach the lug nuts?

“It’s that dog, baby,” she said, smacking Norm on the arm, making his faux leather jacket crinkle. “The one from
Letterman
.”

Norm leaned around to look at Harvey head-on. “Holy crap, it is. Harry the Dog.”

“Not Harry, silly.
Harvey
the Wonder Dog.”

At that, Harvey let out a yip of agreement. He sat up and begged, then did a twirl of a dance around the leather. I thanked God that he didn’t get
too
excited. I only had so many wet wipes.

“You own Harvey?” Norm asked, clearly impressed. I could have been Dolly Parton for all the awe I saw reflected in my rearview mirror. “That’s, like, cool, dude.”

“I only sort of own him.” I concentrated on getting the car back on the road, without being creamed by a passing double semi.

“Oh, Penny, don’t be so modest,” Susan said. “She’s Harvey’s mommy.”

Only because you dumped him on me, I thought but didn’t say. “We’re both his owners,” I said, giving Susan a friendly you’re-stuck-with-me-in-this-one smile.

“Dude, this dog is, like, famous.” Norm let out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re driving an M.B.”

“M.B.?” I said.

“Mercedes-Benz, dude. A rich chick’s car.”

I wasn’t rich, nor was I a chick, but I let it go. The green sign on my right promised the Tennessee state line was only another forty miles away. Pigeon Forge was another thirty
from there. Soon, Norm and Rita would be gone, off to pursue fame and fortune at Dollywood.

Or maybe just ride the rides and leave with their ticket stubs and some disappointment.

“So, like, what kinda tricks can you make him do? Can you get him to do that thing where he opens a can? Man, if he could pop open a brewski, he’d be a damned handy dog.” Norm thought a second. “Though, it might be better if he could open the fridge
and
the brewski. Save me from getting off the couch.”

I didn’t say anything about his obvious underage status and the fact that he was already sofa surfing and drinking beer. Not to mention the example he’d be setting for his future child.

“So, what can you get him to do?” Norm asked again.

“Hello,”
I said, annoyed and frustrated with my passengers, “I’m not really his—”

I caught sight of Harvey in the rearview mirror. He was standing on his back paws again, waving the two others at me.

“Cool. He waves.”

I’d said hello, the dog had started to wave. Coincidence or was Harvey listening to me? I opted for the first one.

“He’s such a cutie,” Rita said. “Do you know how old he is?”

“How old are you, Harvey?” I asked, half joking, figuring the dog would ignore me and go back to his crumb hunt. Instead, Harvey began pawing at the seat, almost tapping on it. Once, twice, three times…eight times total. “Eight,” I said, not sure I’d just seen the dog count, but maybe…

I mean, he
was
called Harvey the Wonder Dog. Wouldn’t he at least be able to tell how old he was? Dave had mentioned a few tricks in the journal, but overall he’d been pretty vague,
mentioning things like Harvey’s A Routine and his C Routine, whatever those meant. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. Soon enough, Harvey—and his routines—would be Vinny’s problem.

“Oh, my God!” Rita shrieked a second time.

“Don’t tell me that dog peed again.” My wet wipe supply was running low, along with my patience.

“Uh…no.” In the rearview mirror I saw Norm’s eyes grow wide as Rita began to curse and yell, grabbing at his hand. He held hers tight, their joined knuckles turning white, along with every feature in Norm’s face. “We gotta go to the hospital. I think Rita’s having the baby.”

At that she let out another scream and smacked him with her other hand. “Will you quit talking and just get this thing out of me?” She whipped her head around, glaring at Norm. “This is all your fault, you—”

Another scream, a third smack-down for the situation. Norm took it all, no complaint, but the color was a shade off in his face. “
Dude
, we gotta go faster.”

“You said she was only six months pregnant.” I swerved again, into the exit lane, narrowly avoiding a FedEx truck. My gaze darted to the roadside, praying for a little blue sign with an
H
.

Norm shrugged, cool as a cucumber. “What do I know? I failed math three times.”