It was time to figure out what happened next.
TWENTY-SIX
The Great Northern
1953 Chevy Corvette
Now
The drive north was lush and green, even in the heat, and when they got into Washington, it was a good twenty degrees cooler than it had been down in southern Oregon.
They didn’t linger in Washington, but moved quickly through the state and into Montana.
“Are you going to tell me what your plan is?”
“I was thinking I’d keep it a surprise.”
“Is it a very fancy villa where we can have sex in a hot tub?”
“No,” he said. “I was thinking camping.”
She frowned. “Camping.”
“In Glacier.”
She had never been to Glacier National Park before. She was interested in that. But she was a little bit skeptical about camping.
“Did you bring a…a tent?”
“I did. And a Dutch oven. And food.”
“Well,” she said, trying not to sound grumpy. “It sounds like you’re ready to take care of me a little bit at least.”
“You don’t like camping?”
“I haven’t actually done it since the kids were really little, and it was kind of a supervision nightmare. We never did it when I was growing up. And no, I don’t think I like it. But you didn’t ask.”
“Sorry. I guess I should have…”
“We can do it,” she said.
He had planned this. He had brought everything. It felt like he was showing her another piece of himself, and that felt like it mattered. It felt important. To say yes to this.
“Are you martyring yourself?”
She thought about it. Really. She was trying not to just go along with things, but she didn’t think that’s what she was doing here.
“Do you like camping?”
“I always wanted to do it when I was a kid,” he said. “But my mom didn’t like it. My uncle took me a few times. In some parks down in Southern California. They were crowded. I kind of wanted more wilderness camping experience. But I liked it. It was something that I… I thought that if I had a dad, we might have gone. You know, obviously I have a dad, just not one that cared. I’m over that.” He looked at her from the driver’s seat. She wondered if he was actually over it.
She wondered if you got over something like that.
Becca hadn’t chosen to leave Chloe. It was a trauma, definitely, to lose your mother like that. But she could know, really know, how much her mom loved her.
Logan was missing that from his father.
“You took Chloe camping,” she said.
