by Leah Atwood
Before they were even fully on the road, Eli started talking around a bite of hamburger. “It’s almost like, if we take too long… if we stop to get a bite to eat or anything, it’s exactly enough time for something else to go wrong with the car.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Avery needed to silence her son before he jinxed them.
“And if you’re going to say things like to that…” Gavin gave an exaggerated wince. “It might be best not to talk at all.”
The nap had done Avery good. She felted rested and ready to tackle whatever else came up. It sure would be nice, though, if nothing else came up with the car. She’d learned not to get her hopes up, though.
Chapter Twelve
Memphis, TX
December 24, 6:30 p.m.
Gavin, who was driving, crumbled up the wrapper from his burger and stuffed it into the empty bag between their seats. “So tell me about your parents. You know a fair amount about my family. Tell me about yours.”
“Grandma and Grandpa are cool.” Eli inserted himself into the conversation. “They got me my first cellphone!”
Avery rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? They bought him a smart phone and put him on their plan way back before I could even afford to have one of my own. Talk about power going to a kid’s head.” She waggled her fingers at Eli in the rearview mirror.
Gavin studied her, an expectant look on his face.
“You want the whole kit and caboodle, huh?”
“Yeah. Give me the background. Where you grew up. What they did for a living. The works.”
“I grew up in Rio Rancho, north of Albuquerque. My folks still live there today in the same home where they raised me. Good, God-fearing folks. Hard-working. Best parents a girl could ask for.”
“So…” Gavin’s eyebrows drew together. “Basically the American dream?”
She laughed self-consciously. “More or less, yeah.”
“What’d they do for a living?”
“My dad’s a pulmonologist. My mom stayed home with me when I was growing up, but when I got older, she got a part-time job as a receptionist in a dental office.”
Gavin sounded surprised. “They still work?”
Avery nodded. “They’re in their fifties. Dad still works full-time, and Mom has kept her part-time job all these years.”
From her vantage point, Avery saw his eyebrows lift then relax back into place. He started tapping one of his fingers on the steering wheel. She knew he wanted to ask. What went wrong? How’d you end up pregnant and unmarried? The question was there on his face, but she figured he wasn’t going to ask it with her son right there in the car. He’d probably say it a lot more tactfully, too.
Even Eli picked up on it. He tapped her on the shoulder. “I’ve asked him all kinds of personal questions. I’m pretty sure you can tell him where babies come from. Seems a trustworthy sort.”
Gavin sputtered, and Avery gulped down the drink of water she’d just taken. “Eli, really.”
He grinned unrepentantly and put his earbuds back into place.
Gavin glanced over at his passenger and saw the blush staining her cheeks. Eli sure did know how to push his mom’s buttons. In his own way, the boy had given Avery permission to tell Gavin about where he’d come from.
Returning his eyes to the road, he waited for her to speak. A couple minutes passed before she began.
“I was a junior in college. I was working for the campus newspaper chasing an article about the campus ROTC programs.”
“Chasing?”
From the corner of his eye, he caught her shrug. “It seemed like an important story at the time. As it turns out, in the whole scheme of things, it wasn’t such a big deal. While I was on the story, I met this airman. He was smart, handsome, funny… all the things I wanted in a man.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “All the things I thought I wanted, anyway. I was a little too young to realize that wasn’t the complete package.”
No way was she getting off that easy. “What was missing from the package?”
“Commitment, mostly. Some other things, too, but mostly commitment.”
Gavin had the feeling she was leaving some parts of the story out in deference to her son, sitting a short distance behind them.
“We dated for about eight months. I fell crazy-out-of-control in love. He proposed, and I said yes. As a low-ranking second lieutenant, he didn’t make a lot of money. So I was going to have to wait for a ring. I didn’t mind. We were in love and engaged.”
“What changed?”
She sighed. “He got his orders. Deployment was coming. I wanted to get married before he left, but he wanted to wait till he got back. This man I loved was going into harm’s way and might not come back to me alive. It was overwhelming. Then he said he wanted something to remember me by. I said no, but he kept bringing it up. Eventually I said yes. I probably would have done anything he’d asked by then. I didn’t want to see him go, and I believed we’d be getting married when he returned.”
Gavin’s heart dropped like a stone in his chest. “Did he return?”
She snorted. “He didn’t die, if that’s what you mean.”
The way she said it didn’t quite fill him with relief on her behalf.
“He never intended to marry me. More than one girl on that campus got played by him the exact same way. How he managed to keep us all straight is beyond me. It turned out I was the only one in his little collection who’d planned to wait till she was married to, um, get involved like that… which meant I was also the only one not already on the pill.”
Gavin would have punched the guy if he’d been there. His hands clenched around the steering wheel, and the muscles in his back and neck tensed. He forced his voice into submission, carefully modulating it as he spoke. No need for her to realize how upset he was. “I’m sorry he treated you that way.”
Avery shrugged. “We all have to learn the harsh realities of life eventually. I learned while I was in college. Unfortunately, that meant Eli had to learn as an infant.”
“He seems to have handled it well.”
“I’m blessed. He’s a good kid. And I got to finish college. By the time I realized I was pregnant, I was already partway into my senior year, and the airman in question hadn’t replied to any of my emails. I did the only thing I could at that point. I went home and told my parents.”
Gavin winced. She’d said she was on good terms with her folks now, but even so, that had to have been a difficult task to face.
“They never wavered in their love, and they never blamed me. I have amazing parents, and I know how fortunate I am in that regard.” She fidgeted with her water bottle for a while before taking a drink. “With their help, I was able to finish college and serve an internship with a local newspaper. I don’t know where Eli and I would be if it hadn’t been for them.”
“Did you tell him he was going to be a father?”
“I did.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. Either it didn’t bother her anymore, or she was acting like it didn’t. “Email, snail-mail, airmail – I tried everything I could think of until the mail started getting returned unopened. A friend of mine was dating someone in his unit, so I knew when he returned stateside. He was hale and hearty, no injuries to speak of. I assume he got at least one of the messages I sent telling him I was pregnant.”
She gave a half-shrug. “He never looked me up after he returned. Eventually he got stationed elsewhere and left the area. It’s not as though my name has changed, and I made sure he had my parents’ address before he left. He’s had plenty of opportunity to find me in the years since, but as far as I know, he’s never tried. At some point, I stopped wondering if I’d hear from him.”
“I’ve read some of your articles. You support those who serve in the armed forces. I’m kind of surprised after hearing your story. It would have been easy for you to hold his actions against everyone who ever put on a uniform.”
Avery shook her head. “Nah. If I buy a ba
g of oranges, and the first one I pull out is rotten, I’m not going to assume the whole bag needs to be tossed. It happened that the first man I got involved with was a rotten orange. His being in the military was coincidence. I’m pretty sure he would have been a rotten orange no matter what his career.”
“On behalf of men everywhere, I apologize for the rotten orange.”
“It’s okay.” This time she gave him a half-smile. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’d kick him as hard as I could if I saw him now, but not because of me.”
“Because of Eli.”
She nodded.
“Hard as it may be to swallow, Eli might be better off without him. I mean, if this is the kind of man he is, then what kind of influence would he be on your son?”
“I know.” Her agreement lacked enthusiasm. “But every child should know they’re loved. Every child should feel valued. No child should have to grow up knowing one of their parents didn’t want them.”
Her hands were clenched in her lap, and Gavin reached over and rested one of his hands on hers. “I think you’ve covered all those bases. You can’t force the man to be a part of Eli’s life, but that kid will never doubt your love. He has grown up knowing what it means to be wanted and valued. There are lots of kids out there with two parents who can’t say the same thing.”
Avery pulled one of her hands out of his grasp and rested it on top of his. With his hand sandwiched between both hers, he felt every nuance of her touch. Warmth pooled in his fingertips and worked its way up to his chest. His heart didn’t race, though. It was calm as could be. Not.
They drove along in peaceful quiet with nothing but the soft sound of the radio in the background for the next several miles. Avery had shared more with Gavin than she had anybody else in a long time. First, asking him about Eli’s faith, and then telling him about her son’s father.
She didn’t understand why, but she trusted him in a deep-down way that didn’t feel as foreign to her as she thought it should. Surprised by her reaction to him, Avery finally acknowledged that she wanted to get to know him better, and not just in the usual surface way. A practical person at heart, facts usually shaped her logical approach to any situation. With Gavin, though, it was somehow different. The events of his life didn’t matter as much as how they’d affected him, and logic was overruled by how she felt when she was around him.
“What about you? I imagine when you were ready to go back to work, you could have gotten a job anywhere. How’d you end up at the Albuquerque Times?”
Gavin let out a sardonic laugh. His hand, which he’d reclaimed for driving a few miles back, now tugged at his stocking cap.
“I burned a lot of bridges.” He stopped, his hand tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. “When I decided to take care of my mom, I quit everything, walked away. People were left in the lurch because of my choices. As a result, a lot of them ended up with a sour taste in their mouths whenever my name came up. Plus, some other new up-and-coming stars were on the rise. It’s a fame-based industry, and once your name is forgotten — even if it’s just for a week — you can be replaced. And I was. Replaced, that is.”
“I’m sure there were some people out there still willing to give you a chance.”
He nodded. “There were, but I needed to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I wasn’t quite convinced that it would be good for me to head back into the world I’d been in before. While I went into photojournalism because I wanted to make a difference, the reality of the industry is a lot more political than I’d realized when I made that choice. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back.” He stopped long enough to adjust the air vents for the heater and to give the rearview mirror the tiniest shift to the left. “Spending those last years with Mom reminded me of the simpler times when life had a slower pace and everyone was happier.”
“Slow isn’t always bad.”
He chuckled. “No, I think it’s pretty good. When Audrey asked me if I’d be interested in doing some work for Mitchell, I balked. The idea of a pity job didn’t appeal. She was my sister, and I loved her for it, but I didn’t want her forcing her husband to give me a job. Then Mitchell called a couple days later to say it had been his idea, not Audrey’s. He’d asked her to call because he thought she’d be better at convincing me. I might not have been able to find the kind of work I wanted, but my name still garnered enough recognition that he thought it would bring some credibility to the Times.”
“It did. It’s your name and skill as a photographer that brought our small town feature to national attention and got us syndication.”
“Don’t say so during contract negotiations, or you’ll get burned.” A quiet laugh trilled through his words like a clarinet in concert.
“Do you enjoy working for the Times?” Hopefully he didn’t figure out that she was fishing for the answer to a different question. Just how long was he planning to stay in Albuquerque?
He glanced her way, eyes twinkling.
Drat. Her attempt at subtlety had missed the mark.
“The syndication forced me to sign papers, so I’ve committed the next year to Mitchell. I figure I owed him at least that much. He’s been good to me, both personally and professionally. There are a lot of snakes out there, and he’s not one of them. I can live with giving him the next year of my life.”
Did Gavin realize how much he’d just told her about his character? Commitment mattered to him. The outside world might not think so. After all, he’d walked away from his professional commitments to care for his mom. But she knew better.
A minute ticked by before Avery broke into the silence. “I hate to say anything, but…”
Gavin finished her thought. “…The heat’s gone out.”
Chapter Thirteen
Hollis, OK
December 24, 7:15 p.m.
“There’s one!” Avery pointed to a looming sign for a truck stop, and Gavin navigated the car in the correct direction. It came to a stop in one of the parking spots. “Are you sure they’ll be able to help with the heat?”
Gavin shrugged. “If not, they can tell us who might be able to. We won’t make it without heat. The windows are fogging up too bad, and with the passenger window taped closed, I can’t ask you to roll it down and help me to see. Besides, if nothing else, they’ll have a windshield wiper for us.”
“Or a portable defroster.” This from Eli, the one who didn’t even have a driver’s license yet.
Avery spun to her son. “A what?”
He gave her a smug look. “I know more than you think I do about the real world. They sell portable defrosters that plug into the cigarette lighter. I don’t know how effective they are, but I know they’re out there.”
The always-in-control parent in her wanted to ask how he knew about things like that, but, in all honesty, what did it matter? It wasn’t as if he’d claimed to know how to roll a joint. Knowing about DC-powered defrosters wasn’t exactly a red flag for pending parental doom.
They entered the truck stop together. Avery headed straight for the restroom. One of these days she would go see a doctor. Maybe. Who was she kidding? The day would come when she didn’t make it to the bathroom on time. Then she’d be motivated to take the time out of her schedule to see someone about a prescription for her overactive bladder — or whatever they called it these days. Difficulty with bladder control hadn’t been mentioned as a consequence of pregnancy when she’d taken sex ed back in high school. Maybe it should be. If more teenage girls realized what pregnancy would do to their bodies…
As she’d come to expect, by the time she exited the restroom and found Gavin, he’d already found the replacement windshield wiper and was juggling two different defrosters that could plug into the cigarette lighter. He was comparing information on the boxes.
He looked up at her as she approached. “I’m thinking we should get both.” He continued to scrutinize the packaging. “In case one works better than the other.”
“How do
they work?”
He showed her the picture. “Plug it in, and then place it on the dashboard directed toward the window you need cleared.”
A burly trucker, well over six feet tall, with a big bushy beard, stopped by them. “You got defroster trouble?” His hulking presence made the already-narrow space shrink around them. Noticing for the first time that they were in a dead-end aisle, Avery tried to inch her way toward freedom only to realize that getting past the trucker without first asking him to move would be impossible.
Gavin, who Avery would have called tall, needed to look up at the trucker. “Uh, yeah.” He craned his neck a bit further. “The heat went out, and we need to make it to Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” The trucker’s eyebrows managed to climb and draw together at the same time. “You ain’t gonna find nothing in Nowhere. Passed through there not too long ago. Place is shut down tight. Gone for the holidays, I’d say.”
He must have their town confused with another. Nowhere was supposed to be cute and quaint and have a hotel for them.
“What you drivin’?” The behemoth of a man stood there waiting for an answer.
Gavin nodded toward their barely visible car. “Older-model, small hatchback. Kind of yellow.”
“And you’ve been able to drive okay on these roads? In that little thing?”
“We’ve managed.”
Eli, who had again snuck into the aisle without notice, gave the trucker a rundown of their journey. “We had a flat tire, and the spare wasn’t aired up. Right after that, the bumper fell off. Then the thermostat stopped working and the car kept overheating. The windshield wipers fell off. Um… what else? Oh yeah. The passenger window got stuck down. Then the heat went out.” He craned his neck until he caught view of his mom around the side of the trucker’s arm. “Did I miss anything?”