Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison Page A

it?” Colleen asked Kevin. “It’s not exactly a workhorse.” In fact, it was exactly her toy—not her midlife crisis car, as Kevin called it. A red Toyota Solara convertible that she’d actually gotten because she always wanted one; since she was frugal enough to buy used, she hadn’t had a choice of colors. She pointed out that he’d better hope she lived to be older than sixty-eight, but that hadn’t stopped his taunts throughout the entire first year she drove it.
    Then his Ford F-250 died and he’d had to borrow the Toyota, and all of a sudden he appreciated one more of the finer things in life.
    “Piece of cake,” he said. “You’re perfectly safe. Just don’t stop suddenly.”
    “What if a deer runs out in front of me?”
    “Hit it.”
    “Kevin!”
    He laughed. “Deer season isn’t until the fall. Keep your eyes open and you’ll be fine. You’re more likely to have a clown dash out in front of you.”
    She had to laugh. “That I’d hit.”
    “That may be the only time I’ve ever seen a clown make you laugh.”
    “True.”
    “So.” He stretched. “What time were they supposed to be here?”
    “Nine.” Colleen looked at her watch and tried to avoid making a snarky, impatient comment. Nine thirty. She’d hoped to have hit the road by now, grabbed McDonald’s breakfast before they stopped serving (nothing worse than craving an Egg McMuffin and being offered chicken nuggets), then kept going until someone needed to pee desperately.
    “I know,” Kevin said, even though she hadn’t commented.
    “You don’t suppose he changed his mind and forgot to tell us, do you?”
    As if in answer, Chris’s big blue boat of a Chevy turned onto the street and barreled down toward the house and into the driveway.
    “Sorry I’m late,” he said when he got out of the car. “We had a little trouble getting going this morning.” He flashed a look at the passenger seat and said, “Come on, Tamara.”
    It wasn’t that he snapped at her, precisely; there was just a subtle edge to his tone that caught Colleen’s attention. The girl had already been collecting herself to get out of the car, but as Colleen herself had explained to Kevin time and again, any trip longer than ten minutes usually involved the removal of things from a purse that had to be hastily put back upon arrival at whatever the destination.
    The less fun the destination, the more crap there was to put away.
    It was like a law of nature.
    Chris looked at his daughter for a minute, then sighed and turned his attention to Colleen. “I really appreciate your doing this. I didn’t know what I was going to do. It wasn’t like I could take her to Vegas with me.”
    “Sorry—Vegas?” “Out West” had sounded a lot more businesslike than Vegas. Suddenly his trip didn’t sound so urgent.
    He nodded. “Conference. The hotels there are cheaper than in other major cities, and there are plenty of flights. But can you imagine me trusting Tamara in the room while I wasn’t there?”
    The girl’s posture shrank almost imperceptibly.
    “I don’t know,” Colleen said, even though she might have said the exact same words to Kevin about leaving Tamara in a B and B room while she went to an auction without her. Something about Chris’s dismissal of his own daughter got under Colleen’s skin, though. Quickly and a little illogically. “I’m sure she’d be fine, if a bit bored sitting around in a hotel room.”
    “She hasn’t been reliably fine in three years,” Chris said, seemingly heedless of the fact that Tamara was getting out of the car then and could hear him.
    Colleen noticed the girl’s eyes dart toward her father, then away.
    “Tamara, you remember your aunt Colleen,” Chris said, stiff. Awkward. Like he was unsure of the name.
    “Not really.”
    Colleen barely remembered her either, and definitely wouldn’t have recognized the tall, thin girl standing before her with pale clear skin, no makeup, and dull black hair