Who do you want to win, Dad?I wondered.Grace and me? Or your best friend?
“We have to be really strategic about speed,” Grace said, even though traffic was at a standstill. “I know there are Subarus everywhere, but we’re toast if he sees our bumper stickers.” She gasped when I slowly lowered my window. “Whatare you doing?”
“Just cracking it,” I told her. “He has his down, and it looks like he’s on the phone. We’ll do a little eavesdropping.”
Mr.Barbour was wearing his AirPods and drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Grace and I didn’t dare look hisway—or breathe, really—once we had audio. “Yes, it’s going to be a brutal ride home,” Grace and I heard him say. “I could put the car in park if I wanted; that’s how backed up everything is.” He paused, then chuckled. “Oh, fuck off, Jeff. Iknowthe New Jersey side has less traffic, but I wasn’t near the bridge…”
“Crap, Iknewwe should’ve taken that route,” Grace mumbled.
“Well, I told Grace I’d be back by six,” her dad continued, “but Kim called a couple hours ago to remind me we madeplans.”
Grace and I exchanged an eyebrow raise.Plans?What plans?
Plans were promising.
“We forgot that we’re having happy hour drinks with our new neighbors.” Pause. “Yeah, that family from Vermont. Their yippy dog still does nothing but bark, but the couple is verynice. Kim’s excited, and told me she could use a cocktail or two after the day she’s had at work.”
“Yes, let loose, Mom!” Grace whisper-cheered. “You drink your G&Ts! Give me as much time as possible!”
“Oh, I’m looking forward to it, too,” Mr.Barbour said. “The neighborhood has started turning over recently. You know Kim and I might be putting the house up soon, but I don’t know….”
Grace’s eyes lit up. Her dad didn’t know if he wanted to move?
I put my hand on her knee and squeezed it. “Hope is not yet lost,” I said.
“Far from it,” she replied. “And James and I haven’t even put together our PowerPoint yet!”
I smirked. The Barbour siblings were pretty talented at persuasive PowerPoint presentations. They made a weekend trip to an indoor waterpark resort in the Poconos sound, in theory, like a dream come true.
Let’s just say that in reality, it was not.
The impatient driver behind us laid on their horn. Grace’s dad jolted at the sound…and glanced over at his daughter and me and our disguises. My chest tightened, realizing I’d miscalculated; I probably looked like my dad in the Phillies jersey and hat. Mr.Barbour’s eyes didn’t widen in immediate recognition, but he cocked his head in confusion. I distracted him from putting any puzzle pieces together by leaning over to give Grace a sloppy kiss. After all, The Parents didn’t knowwe were together yet. “Go,” I whispered once my tongue was no longer lodged down her throat. The horn honked again. “Hurry.”
“It’s not the car behind us,” she whispered back. “It’s the car behindhim.”
Grace was right; with ten wide-open and pothole-ridden yards ahead of him, Mr.Barbour had some ground to cover. Soon enough, a Volvo stopped next to us, but the second the opportunity presented itself, Grace flipped her blinker, narrowly switched lanes, and sped up a sudden stretch of road. “Have fun with the Vermont people, Dad!” she shouted.
Chapter 38
Isa
“I can’t believe it’s here,” James said as our seat belts clicked. He took the captain seat while I’d elected to copilot. Both of us were skeptical of the Tesla’s remaining battery life, especially because we had no intention of leaving the parking lot yet. One last item had popped up on the agenda. “How do you know it’s here?”
“Because of this,” I replied, showing James my phone. Google Maps was on my screen, with one of those Parked Car notifications.
And that little blue icon? It was for someone else’s car. Someone’s else car that I’d ridden shotgun in whenever he invited me on a long drive up the river, connecting my phone to the Bluetooth system to play music. I didn’t understand why the notice had only announced itself now, but everyexasperated iPhone owner knew their devices sometimes operated in inexplicable ways.
My father’s car…it was somewhere close by.
“You aren’t worried about time?” James asked, putting the Tesla in drive. I waited for him to ease up on the brakes. “I know Grace is the one with the locked and loaded curfew, but I don’t want your parents to get suspicious if you aren’t back for dinner….”
“I’m not worried in the least,” I said. “Dinner will be eight o’clock at the earliest, if Mamá doesn’t stay late at the office. I’ll coordinate takeout from Oishi with her train’s arrival time.” I rolled my eyes. “And who knows about my father. Will he even keep his promise and be home tonight?” I tried to laugh. I’d texted him an hour ago to confirm, and he hadn’t responded. In fact, his notifications had beensilenced.“It’s a good thing Everett and I are friends again; now I can crash their dinners like I did in middle school. Mrs.Adler’s food is…” I mimed a chef’s kiss.
“You can always crash your boyfriend’s dinners, too,” James said with a shrug. “Just an FYI. The door is always open. I mean, sometimes it’s locked, but we’ll obviously let you in if you knock—”
I stretched to kiss his cheek. “I will definitely keep that in mind,” I told him. “And don’t worry about locked doors. I have a key.”
“What?Youhave a key tomyhouse and I don’t?”
