Cold Feet by Amy FitzHenry

awesome, Siri,” Liv said, jumping in. “You’re doing a great job.”
    I took this as my cue to push us out the door.
    â€œUm, bye,” Siri called as we hustled out to the parking lot. Before that moment, no one had
ever
hustled on the premises of the Calistoga Ranch, unless it was to snag the last green tea smoothie after forest yoga.
    â€œWhy are we running?” I gasped for breath as I opened the passenger door.
    â€œI don’t know about you but I’m running from Siri,” Livshouted. “She’s gotta be a robot. No actual human being looks that good in a jumper.” She slammed her door closed and started the rental car.
    â€œI was thinking the same thing!”
    Liv peeled out of the parking spot, opening her window and shouting, “Bye, organic pear and fig facial peel! Later, mustard seed body wrap with deep friction massage for an extra fifty bucks! Catch you on the flip side, organic milk bath!” I laughed at Liv’s good-bye to our five-minute five-star experience and felt a ripple of excitement. After living in California for seven years, I was finally looking for my dad, who had been there all along. I was finally looking for answers to the questions that had been skirting around the edge of my mind for weeks. And who knows, I might even find them.

CHAPTER 6
    â€œC an I ask you a question?” Liv said, glancing at me in the warm car, her figure outlined by a slice of orange sun about to succumb to the horizon. We’d been driving for close to an hour. After pulling up directions to San Francisco and locating an oldies station playing “the Seventies at Seven,” we were on our way. In the background, Rod Stewart started to croon about Maggie May. I turned to face Liv to let her know I was listening.
    â€œWhy don’t you ask your mom where he is? Hunter, I mean. I know you guys aren’t close or anything, but maybe she could point us in the right direction. You know, ‘He lives in Pac Heights in the yellow house on Fillmore’—that kind of thing.”
    â€œFor one thing, she doesn’t know. I overheard her talking on the phone years ago. She said after Hunter moved back to SanFrancisco, she never heard from him. So really, this whole thing could be a crapshoot.” I looked out the window. “And secondly, there’s no way I’m getting her involved.”
    â€œGotcha,” Liv said lightly, turning up the music and singing along with Rod, who wished he’d never seen Maggie’s face. Any knowledge my mother may have had about Hunter wasn’t worth getting her two cents on this harebrained scheme, but I couldn’t help being slightly embarrassed. Although I knew Liv loved me unconditionally and, to a certain extent, she understood the cold war between my mother and me, it wasn’t exactly something I was proud of.
    The funny part is, I vividly remember when my relationship with my mother went from best buddies to strained strangers. When I was little I would sit on the kitchen sink while she curled her hair for dates and we would dance around to Earth, Wind and Fire. When I was in kindergarten and I had a cat that seemed to have kittens every year, my mom let me keep the entire brood until I was able to give them away. In fifth grade, when my “friends” formed the I Hate Emma Club one day and told me I wasn’t allowed to sit with them anymore (preteen girls, the true Axis of Evil), I came home the next night and my mom had put up a banner that read,
The
I Love Emma Club
. The club had only one member, but hey, it was better than nothing. But those were the days when Caro was still getting her degree, volunteering at the lobby on the weekends and squeezing in waitressing shifts at the local pizza place to pay the rent. Once she started working full time and I went to high school, things irrevocably changed.
    It was the summer before I started high school, when my mom graduated