As she moved into the left lane, I texted Nalini and Hannah, filling them in. I felt us switch lanes again before my mom observed, “Is that Colin? I thought he was leaving this morning.”
“He is,” I said. I was sensing a bit of judgment. “This is someone else.”
“Oh.” She glanced over at me: I could see myself reflected, small, in her sunglasses. “Well, it’s nice to know you have other friends.”
Forget a sense: Now her point was obvious. “Of course I do. We have a whole group.”
It wasn’t until after I said this that I realized the collective might not have been the ideal choice. “Right,” she said, in such a way I was pretty sure she’d noticed it as well. “I just haven’t gotten to know any of them, I suppose.”
You don’t live here,I wanted to say. Or:You barely know me. Why would you expect to be hanging out with my friends?Instead, I went with, “They’re usually with their own families holidays and summers.”
“Of course. That makes sense.” She glanced at the rearview: a beat later a tow truck whizzed past us, lights flashing. “I guess what I’m saying is, it’s important not to build your entire life around just one person. Especially since you and Colin are attending the same school in the fall.”
“The U is a big place,” I countered. “I doubt we’ll just hang out with each other.”
Before she could answer, my phone chirped. It was Hannah, sending a bunch of shocked faces in reply to my update. She and Nalini were headed to a beach week with a bunch of other seniors later that day, the first of two our friend group planned for the summer. Colin and I would be on the next one, right before we all headed off our separate ways in late August.
Thinking this, I remembered that I had to make a spreadsheet about everyone’s share of the week’s rent, as well as a meal list. Might as well get the jump. I bent down, taking out my laptop, then set my phone beside me and put on my earbuds: I had two podcasts I’d been meaning to listen to.
I’d just cued up an episode when I felt us move off the highway and up an off-ramp. I adjusted the volume, then started typing as the host began murmuring in my ear. I was so absorbed, it took me a minute to realize we were no longer moving. Just sitting, in fact, at a stop sign on the exit to a random highway, nothing else around. Also, something was buzzing.
It was coming from behind us. I turned, seeing my mom’s phone in a leather tote on the backseat.ELIZABETH, said the screen. I waited for her to turn and grab it, but she just stared straight ahead, deep in thought, as if there were more than two options for us to take: right or left.
More buzzing. This was going to make me crazy.
“Are you going to get that?” I asked her.
“What?”
Of course, right then the phone stopped. A school bus puttered past, handprints on the back window. Then the buzzing began again.
My mom sighed, then reached behind her, picking it up. “Hel—”
“Cat?” A voice, female, was suddenly blasting loud enough for me to hear, even with earbuds in. “What is this message I just got? You’re coming now? With the wedding less than a month away?”
My mother opened her mouth to reply. Who was Cat? The woman kept talking.
“You realize how incredibly selfish this is, don’t you? To completely ignore us for ages and then decide oh, hey, Idowant to sell the house, at the worst possible time?” Another pause. This time my mom didn’t even try. “Although I guess I’m supposed to be grateful I heard from you at all. Considering.”
“I—” my mom began.
Click.It wasn’t easy to noisily end a cell call. My mom seemed equally surprised, looking at her phone for a second before putting it in the console, hitting her signal, and turning right. “Your aunt Liz,” she told me.
My only memory of Liz and my other aunt, Kasey, was my grandmother’s funeral, two of a million new faces I’d not seen since. I eased off my earbuds, expecting further details. Instead, she said nothing as we zoomed up behind a slow-moving semi hauling chickens, which was trailing feathers. Finally, I said, “Is that the house you were talking to Dad about?”
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “It belongs to all of us. Since my parents died.”
Well, at least now we were getting somewhere. “I didn’t know you had a place at the lake.”
“I haven’t been back in years.” She eased over, peering around the bus, but a tractor was coming in the other lane.
“Why did you call it the woods?”
She bit her lip and it occurred to me maybe I was asking too many questions. But she had forced me on this trip. The least she could do was fill me in. “Woods is my family name. And our house is on a part of the lake that’s undeveloped and wild. So it’s always been called that.”
“I thought Finley was the family name,” I said, confused.
“That was my mother’s maiden name.” As the semi finally took a wide turn left, opening up the road ahead, she sped up. “I was a Woods until I married your dad.”
