“Bear Bait,” she replied.
“Can we listen to music instead?” Teagan asked.
“No,” said Darcy. “I always listen to podcasts on long drives. This isSober Sam’s Sobriety Podcast. It’s very highly rated. Five stars.”
“Does it have to be this one?” he asked, polite yet firm. “We can listen to the otter talk.”
“No, that was for school. This one’s for you.”
“Darcy. I’m not an alcoholic,” Teagan insisted. “I barely drink. I’m not lying.”
“See, that’s why we’re listening to Step One,” she said with professional cheer. “You need to work on that one, obviously.”
“I would admit it if I was an alcoholic. My mother was an alcoholic. My sister abused pills. Everyone else out here has some kind of substance abuse problem, and they’re all nice people. But I don’t have a drinking problem.”
“Uh huh,” Darcy said, patently unconvinced. “You know, your sister told me you were hospitalized before she brought you out here.”
Teagan froze, the distant shame that had circled him from far out in space now visible in orbit for the first time in days. He looked at it in alarm, willing it to go back out where he didn’t have to think about it. The fluorescent lights of Gracie Square were so foreign to the experience of cutting back branches in the woods with Darcy that it sometimes seemed like he’d hallucinated the experience. “I was,” he warily admitted.
“Yeah, andyounever mentioned the hospital to me. Or to anyone else, right? Nobody knows.”
Teagan exhaled. He didn’t want to think about it. It was a beautiful morning in Montana, and everything else was very far away. It was going to be a very nice drive.
“So?” he asked. So what else was he supposed to do? He’ddone everything his doctor had told him to do. There weren’t twelve steps for having a panic disorder. There wasn’t some duty to announce it to everyone he knew. He took his medications every day. It was even possible he’d never have another panic attack, sothat time he had a nervous breakdowndid not need to be part of his biography.
“So, we’re listening to the podcast,” Darcy said. “Unless you want to talk about why you landed in the hospital? I get why you wouldn’t talk about it with Rachel or the doctor. They suck. But you’ve also had two weeks to talk about it with me, and you haven’t. Do you wanna?”
Her expression said that this was a challenge she was certain he would not meet. She was right. Besides, there was nothing really to talk about, nothing relevant to the woman, the car, the scenery. That was one bad week, one which would not recur.
Teagan shut his mouth and sat back for the long, winding road through the mountain valleys as Sober Sam encouraged them to take stock of everything drinking had cost them. Darcy turned up the volume even higher so that she could crack the windows and get a heady stream of cool air as they sped down the highway.
Teagan’s enthusiasm for the trip was only slightly diminished by the price of admission. The weather in the park couldn’t have been better, and Darcy was probably the best person in the world to visit it with. She’d worked here before, she’d mentioned that. She seemed to know more about it than most guidebooks.
And God, anywhere he looked, the view was amazing.
They passed sprawling mansions and log-cabin shacks, herds of cattle and new-construction horse ranches. The hills and raw rock cliff faces gleamed gold and silver in themorning light. Bits of wind from the cracked windows caught at Darcy’s loose hair and teased it around her face. Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel as they drove at exactly ten miles an hour over the posted speed limit.
As they turned off I-90, the podcast fell silent with the conclusion of Sober Sam’s thoughts on the first step. To cover the absence, Darcy began to sing an endless marching cadence:
I wanna be a forest ranger
Wild squirrels are my only danger
The sun was now coming right through the windshield and into their eyes. Darcy pulled an elastic from her wrist and tied back hair lit to the color of fresh embers by the angle of the light, then took a pair of knockoff Ray-Bans from the sun visor and tipped them over the arch of her nose. She was so beautiful his chest ached like he’d pulled a muscle there.
Darcy caught him looking at her and shoved his arm, laughing because she thought his expression was about her singing.
“Episode two,” she said, and turned on more Sober Sam.
Teagan would have preferred her singing, even though she couldn’t find half the notes she was looking for.
Darcy straightened up as they passed the tollbooth to Yellowstone and fiddled with her hair in the rearview mirror when they reached the first intersection.
“Which way to the beavers?” Teagan asked, scrutinizing the park map she’d shoved in his lap.
Darcy finally, blessedly, turned off the podcast and looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she took the turn toward Mammoth Hot Springs.
“Okay, so, full disclosure,” she said. “Beavers are actually crepuscular.”
