Tabitha turned down the music, and while stopped dead amongst yet a new sea of cars for the gazillionth time, she got busy and paired her phone to the vehicle, then hit her sister’s number.
“Tabbi?” Sheila’s anxious voice immediately had Tabitha sitting up straight.
“What’s wrong, Sheels?”
“Nothing. No. Nothing really. I was worried about you flying. You didn’t call. You didn’t call. I thought you crashed.”
Tabitha could picture her sister rocking, and immediately felt contrite. “I’m so sorry, Sheels. You can relax now. My flight got delayed in Tampa, then with having to pick up a stupid car and find my way out of freaking Logan airport in fricking rush hour traffic, I got a little distracted.”
“You said freaking. And fricking,” her sister snorted, changing moods in a blink, which was often the case. “Freaking plane, freaking car, fricking traffic. Freaking funny!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Tabitha laughed, happy that Sheila’s mood had turned to humor. “Make fun of me all you want. At least when I say freaking and fricking, I don’t owe your swear jar any money.”
Sheila had become aware of “swear jars” via one of her favorite sit-coms, and before Tabitha had managed to clean upher language, her sister had basically extorted fivers out of her like it was raining. Tabitha had her mouth under control now, but occasionally she’d let loose with invectives on purpose so her sister would have more ready cash, which in some convoluted way made Sheila feel like she’d earned it.
Theirs was a harmless game, and if it made Sheila happy…
“Anyway,” Tabitha continued. “I’m here. I’m safe, and other than the fact that this trip has been a grind so far, everything is good.”
“I miss you Tabbi,” Sheila sighed. “I put an X on my calendar today.”
Tabitha had bought her sister a cat calendar—because she was obsessed with felines, but couldn’t have one in the group home she shared with three other people—and some glitter pens, outlining in green the days she’d be gone before encouraging Sheila to mark them off as they passed, one by one.
“That’s great, Sheels. What color did you use?”
“Red. Like your hair. Not exactly like your hair, because they don’t make that color marker, but it’s still red. Like your hair.”
Tabitha had wondered whether Sheila would follow through with using the calendar. Sometimes she got it in her head that something wasn’t right, and would dig her heels in and refuse, arbitrarily it seemed, to listen to reason. Tabitha was glad Sheila had embraced this. “And your mark means I’ll be gone for?—”
“Seven more days,” Sheila interrupted snarkily. “I’m not stupid.”
“I know you’re not,” Tabitha assured her, soothingly. “You’re one of the smartest people I know.”
Indeed, Sheila was brilliant. Her IQ was on the moon. Higher than Tabitha’s, for sure. Her autism, however, made it almost impossible to relate to others in social situations, and her anxiety—even though she was medicated for it—was often timesdebilitating. Less so, lately, it seemed, since they’d lessened her dosages. Which was a boon.
Tabitha wondered if finding a new doctor would behoove Sheila even more, but changes were tough for her sister. Still, she was going to look into it when she got home. Tabitha knew that the meds her sister was taking now, the same ones she’d had for several years, weren’t the right ones any more.
Traffic was starting to lighten as Tabitha approached the New Hampshire boarder, and she drew in a deep breath. “It looks like the road ahead is starting to clear,” she told Sheila. “You want to keep talking, or are you good?”
“My show is on in…three minutes. Call me tomorrow.”
Sheila hung up abruptly and without fanfare.
Tabitha laughed. If she wasn’t used to her sister’s lightning-fast mood changes, she might have been offended.
Feeling a little better about things, Tabitha settled down for the rest of her long drive, looking around her at the scenery before it got too dark.
It being mid-May in New England, dusk was just starting to encroach. The trees to each side of the highway were silhouetted against the cloud-dappled skyline like large skeletons, looking only slightly shaggy as their new leaves were beginning to unfurl. By the time she left the area next week, they’d probably be nearing full bloom. It was interesting here. The trees and the seasons in the north-east were…different. Florida was not nearly as dramatic.
Tabitha also wasn’t used to the windy chill in the air that was prevalent this evening, so where she’d normally have the windows down in her car back home—eschewing air temperature controls, as was her habit—she’d left them only slightly cracked tonight and cranked the heat.
The warmth made her sleepy, for sure, but she wasn’t about to freeze her ass off. She hated the cold. Being in Groton forseveral years hadn’t made her any more immune to the northern chill.
By the time she got to the boarder of Maine, traffic, thank God, was almost non-existent. The nearly empty highway stretched out in front of her like a vast, black snake as she counted the mile markers. Every now and then she’d pop another mint, keeping a keen eye out for deer and moose. Reading up about the area as she’d flown in, one of the caveats she’d seen had been about driving at night while males were in rut. Although it was no longer mating season, the risk, albeit minimal, was still there. And the last thing she wanted to do was hit a six-foot animal with her tiny car.
Can anyone say accordion?
Pullinginto the very empty parking lot of her motel just before one in the morning, Tabitha was bleary-eyed. Once she’d cleared the traffic, the drive had been easy, but freaking long. She couldn’t wait to wash the day away with a quick shower, then hit the hay. If she were lucky, she could get five hours in-between the sheets. Tabitha calculated in her head. She was supposed to meet the ship that had transported her sub at 7:30 AM. The trip out in the skiff she’d rented shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. If there were no glitches between now and morning, she might even have time for a quick breakfast.
