“Honey, it’s on your phone.” She waved hers. “You type in stuff—or, if you get really good like I have, you can dictate—and it helps solve all your problems. I mean, the ones that have answers. Oscar’ll never bring Artie back, but he makes a mean itinerary. Do you want to hear it?”
Maggie continued driving, glancing side to side for a suitable restaurant but everything looked like a greasy spoon to her or a treacherous left turn without a light. “I don’t trust robots or that fake stuff,” Maggie said. “I don’t like computers.”
“Well, then you’ll die in the dark, my friend. This is the way of the future. All I did was ask Oscar to write me up a plan for two old ladies driving from Destin to Miami Beach.”
“We’re not?—”
“Yes, we are. I told him no highways, if possible, and no more than three to four hours a day on the road with plenty of stops at tourist places and gardens. You like gardens, I know.”
Maggie just narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t trust robots. They don’t know anything. They don’t know how hot the pavement gets in August.”
“Oh, but they do, and Oscar will tell you in Fahrenheit, Centigrade, and what are the best shoes to wear.”
“I don’t need?—”
“Just listen to this.” Jo Ellen flipped through the pages. “Day One—depart Destin on scenic highway 30-A. Very famous, as you know. We’ll drive through Grayton Beach, Seaside—which looks like a postcard—and lunch in Rosemary Beach.”
“Fake town,” Maggie said. “They just lifted it up out of nowhere, I heard.”
Jo Ellen flipped her hand. “After all that, we’ll take an easy drive to Panama City Beach.”
“Great. Spring breakers. We can enter a wet T-shirt contest and chug beer.”
Laughing, Jo flipped the page. “Actually, we can stay at the Driftwood Lodge, which Oscar says is a classic?—”
“Travel agent-speak for ‘it has bugs and mold.’ No, thank you.”
“Mags!” She gave a playful slap on Maggie’s arm with the paper. “It’s two and a half hours in the car on Day One.”
“At that rate, we’ll get to Miami in September.” She gave a soft look to her friend. “I appreciate your—and Oscar’s—work and enthusiasm, but I’m not going.”
“But we can stay at a waterfront inn in Apalachicola,” she said, undaunted. “It has a wraparound porch and rocking chairs. The owner’s got a one-eyed cat named Crabcake and serves key lime pie for breakfast. I mean, come on, Mags. Let’s live.”
“Or die…in Frank’s bucket of bolts we take to a town named after a soft drink.”
Jo Ellen dropped back with a sigh of resignation. “You’re doing it again.”
“What? Being reasonable, sensible, and wise? I can’t help it.”
“Covering your deep fears with sarcasm and dry wit.” Jo Ellen folded the papers and slid them back in her purse. “You did it the day I met you, in the dorm at the University of Georgia. You decided my name was Sue Ellen, not Jo Ellen.”
“A nod to Scarlett O’Hara’s sister.”
“The plain one,” Jo said. “But what you were doing was covering your fear that you wouldn’t like sharing a room with a stranger. A Yankee, no less.” She fake fanned herself. “I do declare, Captain Butler!”
“Will you stop?”
“Will you?” Jo countered. “Don’t think I can’t see what you’re doing, Maggie Lawson, when you use your intelligence and rapier wit to get what you want.”
“Look, there’s a little diner that doesn’t look too bad. Should we try it? I’m very hungry.” She gave Jo a side-eye. “Don’t make me pull out my rapier wit, whatever that is.”
“It cuts to the core and, yes, let’s go there.”
Maggie pulled into the parking lot of a strip center, finding a spot close to the restaurant. Parked, she turned off the engine and looked at Jo Ellen.
“All kidding aside, I’m not going, Jo, even if it is by way of Apa-coca-cola. I’m not risking my life—or yours—on some highway adventure in a rolling death trap with more miles than the space shuttle?—”
“Speaking of, we can make a day trip to the Kennedy Space Center.”
