Fourteen
“Sure you’re okay?” my mom asked, glancing over at me.
“Not too hot? Too cold?”
I looked at the
console in front of me, where there were buttons for seat heat,
regular heat, fan, humidity control. Peter’s SUV, one of the
biggest I’d ever seen, wasn’t a car as much as a living space with
wheels. “I’m good.”
“Okay,” she said.
“But if you want to adjust anything, feel free.”
So far, we’d been on
the road for a little under an hour, and conversation had been
limited to this topic, the weather, and the beach itself. The car
was on cruise control, and I honestly felt like I was, as well—just
going through the motions while the chaos of the afternoon receded,
mile after mile, behind us.
I’d been right: when
I got back to the house, my mom was waiting, busy distributing
juice boxes to the twins, who were strapped into their adjoining
car seats in the vast backseat. “Hello!” she’d called out, waving a
plastic straw at me. “Ready for a road trip?”
“Yeah,” I’d replied.
“Let me just get my stuff.”
Inside the house, I
splashed water on my face and tried to calm down. All I could think
of was everyone gathered around that laptop, with those versions of
me up for scrutiny in front of them. The shame I felt was like a
fever, hot and cold and clammy all at once, and no amount of
buttons or adjusting would make a damn bit of
difference.
“So what I’m
thinking,” my mom said now, doing a quick check in the rearview
mirror of the twins, who were asleep, “is we’ll go to the house and
get unloaded, and then maybe take a quick trip to the boardwalk.
There’s a really good diner there, and we can grab dinner and then
go look for a swimsuit for you. Sound good?”
“Sure.”
She smiled, reaching
across to squeeze my knee. “I’m so, so glad you’re here, Mclean.
Thank you for coming.”
I nodded, not saying
anything as my phone buzzed in my pocket. I’d finally turned off
the ringer after logging calls from my dad, Riley, and Deb in the
first twenty minutes we’d been on the road. It was either ironic,
hilarious, or both to be dodging other people’s calls in favor of
talking to my mother. But nothing made sense anymore.
As we kept driving,
the highway gave way to two-lane roads, the trees going from big
oaks to scrubby coastal pines. I kept thinking of those old road
trips we’d taken together, in Super Shitty, when it was newer and
her car. She did the driving while I ran the radio and kept tabs on
our drinks, making sure we had ample coffee or Diet Coke as needed.
Sometimes we splurged on magazines, which I’d then read aloud,
educating us on makeup and diet tips when the radio stations got
fewer and farther between. Now, in Peter’s huge car/truck/ space
station, we had a built-in cooler packed with refreshments and
satellite radio with over three hundred stations to choose from and
not a single gap in signal. Not to mention company, in the form of
two toddlers. The landscape was about the only thing that hadn’t
changed.
I’d been
dreading the trip for any number of reasons, but especially due to
the fact that I’d be stuck with my mom for four straight hours of
driving with no escape from conversation. She surprised me, though,
by being as content as I was with long periods of silence. I
started to get self-conscious about it, after a while.
“I’m sorry I’m not
talking much,” I told her when we were about an hour and a half
away. “I think I’m just really tired.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” she
said. “To be honest, I’m exhausted myself. And with these two, I
don’t get a lot of quiet. This is . . .” She glanced over at me.
“It’s nice.”
“Yeah,” I said as my
phone buzzed again. I pulled it out, ignoring the screen, and
turned it fully off before sliding it back into my pocket. “It
is.”
It was just getting
dark when we drove over the bridge to Colby, the sound spread out
vast and dark beneath us. By then, the twins were up and crabby,
and we’d had to put on Elmo doing covers of Beatles songs—a torture
that was a first to me—in order to keep them from totally
mutinying.
“Mclean,” my mom
said, reaching behind her to pull up the diaper bag, which was huge
and overflowing with wipes, Huggies, and various other supplies,
“would you mind finding them a snack in here? We’ll be there in ten
minutes or so, but food might hold off a full-on nuclear
meltdown.”
“Sure,” I said,
digging around until I found a bag packed with the familiar little
fish-shaped crackers. I opened it up, then turned around in my seat
to face the twins. “You guys hungry?”
“Fish!” Connor
yelled, pointing at the bag.
“That’s right,” I
said, taking out a few and handing them to him. Madison, who was
sucking on a Sippy Cup, stuck out her hand, as well, and I gave her
an equal portion. “Dinner of champions.”
My mom put on her
turn signal, taking a left onto the road that stretched down the
center of the town proper. I didn’t remember much about Colby
itself, other than that the last time I’d been here it had seemed
newer than North Reddemane, full of partially built houses,
building permits everywhere. Now, years later, it looked much more
established, with all the things you’d expect to find in a typical
beach town: surf shops, clothing stores, hotels, and bike-rental
places. As we drove past the boardwalk and kept going, the lots and
houses got bigger, then bigger still, switching from duplexes and
boxy weekend places to vast structures painted bright colors,
swimming pools stretched out in front of them. The twins were
whining in tandem, Elmo singing, “Baby, you can drive my car,” in
full-on pip-squeak mode, when my mom turned into a driveway, pulled
up to the wide front steps of a foamgreen house, and
parked.
“Here we are!” she
said, looking back at the twins. “See? It’s the beach
house.”
I saw. In fact, I was
pretty sure my mouth was hanging open. “Mom,” I said as she pulled
out her keys from the ignition, pushing the door open.
“Wow.”
“It’s not as big as
it looks,” she said, getting out. Behind me, Madison let out a
wail, competing with Elmo in pitch. “I swear.”
I just sat there,
staring up at this huge, green mansion rising in front of me. There
were columns, three stories, a lowerlevel garage, and,
visible="3"“rough the high glass windows over the front door, a
vast ocean view, stretching as far as you could see.
“Mama, I’m hungry,”
Connor whined, as my mom unbuckled his car seat. “I want mac and
cheese!”
“Mac and cheese! ”
Madison seconded, waving her Sippy Cup.
“Okay, okay,” my mom
told them. “Just let us get inside.”
She hitched Connor
onto her hip, then came around to the other side of the car, taking
out Maddie, as well, and planting her on the other side. After
strapping on both the diaper bag and her purse, she started up the
front steps, looking like a Sherpa scaling Everest.
“Mom,” I said,
getting out of the car and catching up with her. “Please. Let me
get something, at least.”
“Oh, honey, that
would be great,” she said over one shoulder. I reached out to take
the diaper bag and purse, only to find myself suddenly holding
Maddie, who latched her arms around my neck, her chubby legs
tightening at my waist. She smelled like wipes and baby sweat, and
promptly dropped a damp goldfish down my shirt. “Now, let me just
find my keys . . . here. Okay! We’re in.”
She bumped the door
open wider with her hip, then went inside, reaching to hit a light
switch as I followed her. Immediately, the entryway brightened,
displaying deep yellow walls lined with beach-themed framed
drawings.
“So this is the
kitchen and living room,” my mom was saying as we headed up the
nearby stairs, Connor hanging off her hip, Maddie clutching me with
one hand, the other in her mouth. “The master suite is over there,
and the rest of the bedrooms are on the second and third
floors.”
“There are four
floors?”
“Um,” she said,
glancing back at me as she hit another switch, illuminating a wide,
open kitchen. A stainless Sub-Zero fridge, bigger and much newer
than the one at Luna Blu, sat at one end. “Well, actually, there
are five. If you count the game-room level. But that was just
unfinished attic space, really.”
There was a trilling
noise, a melody I recognized but couldn’t place. My mom, Connor
still in her arms, reached into her purse, pulling out her phone. I
said, “Is that—”
“The Defriese fight
song,” she finished for me. “Peter put it on there for me. I used
to have ABBA, but he insisted.”
I didn’t say
anything, just stared out the row of huge windows at the ocean. My
mom put the phone to her ear, then leaned down, releasing Connor,
who immediately ran over to the fridge, banging his hands on it. I
tried to do the same with Maddie, but she held on tighter, if that
was possible.
“Hello? Oh, hi,
honey. Yes, we just got here. It was fine.” My mom looked at
Connor, as if weighing whether to try to corral him. In seconds, it
was a moot point, as he was taking off across the room at full
speed. “We’re about to unpack a bit and go up to the Last Chance.
Did you get dinner? Good.”
I walked over to the
nearest window, Maddie twirling a piece of my hair, and looked out
at the deck. Down below, I could see the pool, part of it exposed,
the other tucked beneath an overhang.
“I’ll call you as
soon as we’re back here,” my mom continued, digging around in her
prse. “I know. Me, too. It’s not the same without you. Okay, love
you. Goodbye.”
Connor ran back past
us, bumping against my hip. “Beach!” he yelled, his small, high
voice echoing around the vast room.
“Peter says hello,”
my mom told me, dropping her phone back in her bag. “We don’t
usually spend nights apart, if we can help it. I keep telling him
that most couples travel separately all the time, but he still
worries.”
“Worries? About
what?”
“Oh, any- and
everything,” she said. “He just likes it better when we’re all
together. Let me just bring in a few things, and we’ll go. Would
you mind watching the twins for just a second? It’s easier without
an entourage.”
“Sure,” I said, as
Connor ran back the other way, now spreading his palm prints across
the row of glass doors that led outside. She smiled at me
gratefully, then started back down to the car. A moment later, I
heard a garage door cranking open, and the SUV disappeared beneath
the house.
Which left me in this
crazy huge living room with my half siblings, one of whom, like a
one-man wave of destruction, had already smudged just about every
glassy reflective surface in sight. “Connor,” I called out as he
banged his baby fists against a window. “Hey.”
He turned, looking at
me, and I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to say to him.
Or do with him. Downstairs somewhere, a car door shut.
“Let’s go check out
the water,” I said, trying to put Maddie down again. No luck. So it
was with her still on my hip that I crossed the room, unlocked the
back door, and put my hand out to Connor. He grabbed it, holding
tight, and we went outside.
It was dark, the wind
cold, but the beach was still beautiful. We had it all to
ourselves, save for a couple of trucks parked way down at one end,
headlights on, fishing poles stuck in the sand in front of them. As
soon as we hit the sand, Connor pulled loose from me, running to a
tide pool just a few feet away, and I scrambled to catch up with
him. He bent down, tentatively reaching out to touch the still,
shallow water there with one hand. “Cold,” he told me.
“I bet,” I
said.
I looked up at the
house, seeing my mom pass in front of that row of windows, carrying
some reusable cloth grocery bags, lights on all around her. The
houses on either side were dark, clearly unoccupied.
“Cold,” Maddie
repeated, burrowing into my shoulder. “Go inside.”
“In one sec,” I
replied, turning to look at the water again. Even at night, you
could see the foam as the waves crashed, moving forward then
pulling back again. I stood there beside Connor, who was still
patting the tide pool, the wind ruffling his tufts of baby hair,
then looked up at the sky overhead. My mom didn’t need that old
telescope here, clearly. The stars seemed close enough to touch,
and she’d never have to look very hard to find one. She’d never
want for anything. And even though I knew that for her, and even
Connor and Maddie, this was a good thing, it made me sad in a way I
wasn’t sure I even understood.
“Mclean?” I heard my
mom call. When I turned back, I saw her framed in the open double
doors, one hand on her hip. “Are you out there?”
It was so strange,
but for a moment, a part of me wanted to stay quiet, for her to
have to come look for me. But just as quickly, this thought passed
and I cupped my hand over my mouth to be heard over the
waves.
“Yeah,” I yelled
back. “We’ll be right in.”
After doing an
eat-and-run at a local diner—the twins were weary of being
contained and lasted about ten seconds in their high chairs—we
walked down the boardwalk in the cold to the boutique my mom had
mentioned earlier, only to find it closed.
“Winter hours,” she
said, checking the sign. “They closed at five.”
“It’s no big deal,” I
told her. “I probably won’t swim anyway.”
“We’ll get you a suit
tomorrow, first thing,” she told me. “Promise.”
Back at the house, we
unloaded the rest of the car, using the elevator (elevator!) to
move the luggage up to the third floor. I was in a room with a
coral pink bedspread, wicker furniture, and a block sign that read
BEACH in big letters hanging over the mirror. It smelled like fresh
paint and had a gorgeous view. “Are you sure?” I asked my mom as we
stood inside, the twins scrambling up to jump on the bed. “I don’t
need a bed that big.”
“They’re all that
big,” she explained, looking embarrassed. “I mean, except for the
twins’. I’ll put them at the other end of the house, so they won’t
wake you up at the crack of dawn.”
“I get up pretty
early,” I said.
“Five
a.m?”
“What?” I just looked
at her as she nodded. “Wow. No wonder you’re tired.”
“It is exhausting,”
she agreed, this thought punctuated by Maddie and Connor, leaping
with abandon across the bed in front of us. “But they’re only
little once, and it goes so fast. It seems like you were just this
age, I swear. Although when you were a baby I was so worried about
work, and the restaurant . . . I feel like I missed a
lot.”
“You were always
around,” I told her. She looked at me, surprised. “It was Dad who
was gone at Mariposa.”
“I suppose. Still,
though. I’d do some things differently, given the chance.” She
clapped her hands. “All right, Maddie and Connor! Bath time! Let’s
go!”
She walked over to
the bed, collecting the twins despite their protests, and hauled
them off the bed, nudging them to the door. They were in the hall
when Maddie looked back at me and said, “Clane corn?”
I looked at my mom.
“What did she say?”
“Mclean come,” she
translated, ruffling Maddie’s hair as Connor took off in the other
direction. “Let’s let Mclean get settled, okay? We’ll see her
before you go to bed.”
Maddie looked at me.
“Do you need help, though?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” She
smiled, and then they were gone, the sound of their footsteps
padding on the carpet gradually getting more and more distant. How
long was that hallway anyway? Honestly.
After checking out
the view for a fewinutes, I went back downstairs, where I now had
the main floor all to myself. I walked to the overstuffed red
couch, sinking into it, then, after a few minutes of feeling
moronic, figured out how to turn on their flat-screen TV that hung
over the fireplace. I channel surfed for little bit, then flicked
it off again and just sat there, listening to the ocean
outside.
After a moment, I
slid my phone out of my pocket, turning it on. I had three
messages.
“Mclean, it’s your
father. We need to talk. I’ll have my phone with me all night in
the kitchen this evening. Call me.”
No question this
time: it was a demand. I moved on to the next one.
“Mclean? It’s Deb.
Look, I’m really sorry about that whole Ume.com thing today. I wasn’t trying to . . .
I didn’t know, I guess is what I mean to say. I’ll be around if you
want to talk tonight. Okay. Bye.”
I swallowed, then hit
SAVE. A beep, and then Riley’s voice.
“Hey, Mclean. It’s
Riley. Just checking in. . . . That was kind of intense earlier,
huh? Deb’s a nervous wreck. She thinks you’re mad at her. So maybe
call her or something, if you get a chance. Hope you’re doing
okay.”
Kind of intense, I thought, hitting the END button
and putting my phone down beside me. That was one way to put it. I
had no idea how long they’d been looking at that page on Ume, if
they’d really read any of my other profiles or just looked at the
pictures. I could hardly remember what was on them, now that I
actually thought about it. Wondering was enough to get me off the
couch and down to the garage, so I could get my laptop and find
out.
I flicked on the
light by the door, then walked over to the SUV and grabbed my bag
from the front seat. I was just shutting the door when I looked
over, across the empty bay beside Peter’s car. There was another
vehicle parked on the other end, next to a rack filled with hanging
beach chairs and pool toys. It had a cover over it, but there was
something familiar enough to make me come closer and lift its edge.
Sure enough, it was Super Shitty.
Oh my God, I thought, pulling the cover off
completely to reveal the dinged red hood, dusty windshield, and
worn steering wheel. I’d thought for sure that my mom had sold it,
or junked it entirely. But here it was, amazingly, pretty much how
I’d left it. I reached down to the driver’s-side handle, trying it,
and with a creak, it swung right open. I slid behind the wheel, the
familiar seat wheezing a bit beneath me, and looked up at the
rearview mirror. A Gert—one of the rope and beaded bracelets we’d
always bought at the surf shop in North Reddemane—was tied around
it.
I reached up,
touching the row of red beads dotted with shells. I couldn’t
remember my last trip to North Reddemane, or how long it had been.
I was trying to figure it out when, in the rearview, I saw the
storage rack stretched against the garage wall behind me. It was
lined with rubber bins, and from where I sat, I could see at least
three of them were labeled MCLEAN.
I turned, dropping my
hand, and looked again. My mom had mentioned they’d been storing
stuff here, because of all the extra space, but I’d had no idea
she’d meant anything of mine. I started to push myself out of the
seat, then reached back up to pull the Gert loose and take it with
me.
Upon closer
inspection, the shel looked like Dave’s dad had been at it: bin
after bin, clearly marked. I squatted down, pulling out the first
MCLEAN I’d seen, and pried open the top. Inside, there were
clothes: old jeans, T-shirts, a couple of coats. As I quickly
picked through them, I realized they were a mix of everything I’d
left stashed at my mom’s house when I was there for vacations and
weekends, culled from all our various moves. Scuffed cheerleading
shoes that belonged to Eliza Sweet, the pretty pink polo shirts
Beth Sweet had favored. The farther down I dug, the older the
things got, until I was down to my Mclean clothes, like layers of
the earth being excavated.
The second box was
heavier, and when I got it open I saw why: it was full of books.
Novels from my bookshelf, notebooks scrawled with my doodlings and
my signatures, some photo albums and a couple of yearbooks. I
picked up the one on top, which had the words WESTCOTT HIGH SCHOOL
embossed across the cover. I didn’t open it, or anything else,
instead just putting the lid back and moving on.
The last box was so
light that when I first yanked it out, I thought it must be empty.
Inside, however, I found a quilt, recognizing it after a moment as
the one my mom had given me the day my dad and I had left for
Montford Falls. I knew I’d taken it then, and so must have dumped
it off with the clothes and books at some other point and not
realized it. Unlike the one on our couch, it still felt new, stiff,
unused, the squares neatly stitched, not missing any threads. I put
it back, pushing the box in with the others.
It was so weird to
find a part of my past here, in this place that was no part of me
at all. Tucked away in a bottom floor, underground, like Dave’s
storm cellar. I got to my feet, sliding the Gert into my pocket,
and covered Super Shitty again before picking up my bag and heading
back upstairs.
My mom was still busy
with the twins as I sat down at the massive kitchen island on one
of about ten matching leather bar stools and booted up my computer.
As it whirred through its familiar setup, I let myself, for the
first time in hours, think about Dave. It had just been too hard,
too entirely shameful, to think of his expression—a mix of
surprise, studiousness, and disappointment—as he’d looked at that
list of profiles with everyone else. A clean slate, he’d said about
that moment when I knocked him down. Real. He knew better
now.
I opened my browser,
clicking over to Ume.com and typing my e-mail into the search box.
Within ten seconds, the same list they’d seen was in front of me:
Liz Sweet, the newest and most sparse, on top, all the way down to
Mclean, the one I’d had back home in Tyler all those years ago. I
was just clicking on it when I heard the chime of a doorbell from
behind me.
I got up, walking
over to the stairs. “Mom?” I called, but there was no answer,
which, in a house this big, was not exactly
surprising.
The doorbell sounded
again, so I went down and peered out the window to see a tall,
pretty, blonde woman in jeans and a cable-knit sweater standing on
the welcome mat, carrying a shopping bag. A toddler around Maddie
and Connor’s age, with brown curly hair, was on her hip. When I
opened the door, she smiled.
“You must be Mclean.
I’m Heidi,” she said, sticking out her free hand. Once we shook,
she handed me the bag. “This is for you.”
I raised my eyebrows,
opening it. “Bathing suits,” she explained. Sure enough, I saw a
swatch of black, and another of pink. “I wasn’t sure what you wold
like, so I just pulled a couple. If you hate them all, we have tons
more at the store.”
“Store?
”
“Clementine’s?” she
said as the little girl leaned her head on her shoulder, looking at
me. “It’s my boutique, on the boardwalk.”
“Oh,” I said, “right.
We were there earlier.”
“So I heard.” She
smiled, looking down at the baby. “Thisbe here and I can’t stand
the idea of anyone being in the vicinity of a heated pool and hot
tub with no bathing suit. It just goes against everything we
believe in.”
“Right,” I said.
“Well . . . thanks.”
“Sure.” She leaned a
bit to the right, looking past me. “Plus . . . it was an excuse to
get over here and see Katherine, and not have to wait until the
party tomorrow. I mean, it’s been ages! Is she
around?”
Party? I thought. Out loud I said, “She’s upstairs.
Giving the twins a bath.”
“Great. I’ll just run
up super-quick and say hello, okay?” I stepped back as she came in,
bouncing the baby and making her laugh as she ran up the stairs. I
heard her take the next flight, followed by a burst of shrieking
and laughing as she and my mom were reunited.
I went back over to
the computer, sliding into my seat again. Above me, I could hear my
mom and Heidi chattering, their voices quick and light, and as I
scanned all my alter egos I realized that my mom had one now, too.
Katie Sweet was gone, but Katherine Hamilton was a queen in a
palace by the sea, with new friends and new paint on the walls, a
new life. The only things out of place were that car, covered up
and buried deep, and me.
My phone rang, and I
glanced down, seeing my dad’s number. As soon as I picked up, he
started talking.
“You don’t walk away
from me like that,” he began. No hello, no niceties. “And you
answer when I call you. Do you know how worried I’ve
been?”
“I’m fine,” I said,
surprised at the little flame of irritation, so new, I felt hearing
his voice. “You know I’m with Mom.”
“I know that you and
I have things to discuss, and that I wanted them discussed before
you left,” he said.
“What’s to discuss? ”
I asked him. “We’re moving to Hawaii, apparently.”
“I may have a job
opportunity in Hawaii,” he corrected me. “No one is talking about
you having to come as well.”
“What’s the
alternative? Moving back to Tyler? You know I can’t do
that.”
He was quiet for a
moment. In the background, I could hear voices, Leo and Jason most
likely, shouting orders to each other. “I just want us to talk
about this. Without arguing. When I’m not up to my ears in the
dinner rush.”
“You called me,” I
pointed out.
“Watch it,” he said,
his voice a warning.
I got quiet
fast.
“I’m going to call
you first thing tomorrow, when we’ve both had a night to clear our
heads. No decisions until then. Okay? ”
“Okay.” I looked out at the ocean. “No
decisions.”
We hung up, and I
closed my browser, folding all those Sweet girls back away. Then I
walked up the stairs, following the sound of my mom’s and Heidi’s
voices. I passed one bedroom after another, it seemed, the
new-smelling carpet plush beneath my feet, before finally coming up
on them, behind a half-closed door.
“. . . to be honest,
I really didn’t think it through,” my mom was saying. “And with
Peter not here, it’s that much more complicated. I think it was too
much to take on, even though I thought it was what I really wanted
to do.”
“You’ll be fine,”
Heidi told my mom. “The house is finished, you survived the trip.
Now all you have to do is just sit back and try to
relax.”
“Easier said than
done,” my mom said. Then she was quiet for a moment. All I could
hear was splashing, the kids babbling. Then she said, “It was
always a lot of fun in the past. But we’ve only been here a couple
of hours and I’m already . . . I don’t know. Not feeling good about
the whole thing.”
“Things will look
better tomorrow, after you get some sleep,” Heidi
said.
“Probably,” my mom
agreed, although she hardly sounded convinced. “I just hope it
wasn’t a mistake.”
“Why would it be a
mistake?”
“Just because I
didn’t realize . . .” she trailed off again. “Everything’s
different now. I didn’t think it would be. But it is.”
I stepped back from
the door, surprised at the sudden, stabbing hurt that rose up in my
chest, flushing my face. Oh my God, I
thought. Through all the moves, and all the distance, there had
been one constant: my mom wanted me with her. For better or
worse—and mostly worse—I never doubted that for a second. But what
if I’d been wrong? What if this new life was just that, brand-new,
like this gorgeous house, and she wanted to keep it fresh, no
baggage? Katie Sweet had to deal with a moody, distant firstborn
child. But Katherine Hamilton didn’t.
I turned, walking
down that wide hallway, toward a foreign staircase in a house I
didn’t know. I felt scared suddenly, like nothing was familiar, not
even me. I grabbed my computer, stuffing it in my bag and taking
the steps two at a time to the garage. I had a lump in my throat as
I pushed open the garage door, cutting behind Peter’s massive SUV,
over to Super Shitty. I pulled the cover off and threw my bag in
the passenger seat, then realized I no longer had a key. I sat
there a second, then, on a hunch, reached down beneath the floor
mat, rooting around. A moment later, I felt the ridges on my
finger, and pulled out my spare. Waiting for me, all this
time.
The engine cranked,
amazingly, and as it warmed up, I popped the trunk and got out. It
wasn’t easy fitting all three bins in the small cargo space, but I
managed. Then I found the garage door button, hit it, and climbed
back in.
The street was dark,
no cars in sight as I pulled out into the road. I had no idea where
I was, but I knew how to get where I was going. I put on my blinker
and turned right, toward North Reddemane.