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“I was told keeping you caffeinated would be an important part of my survival,” he said, pressing the cup into my hand and stepping away quickly. I knew I shouldn’t have told Jane that story about punching Uncle Seamus in the throat when he tried to wake me during a fire drill at the clinic.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, sipping the coffee and willing the caffeine to flood my brain with sense and energy.
“Andrea Cheney called me late last night and said you needed someone to drive to Georgia with you. And unlike your car, my truck has a good chance of makin’ it past the town limits without the engine fallin’ out.”
“Why would you agree to this?” I asked. “Don’t you have better things to do with your Saturday?
Jed shrugged. “Why not? I like to drive. I think Andrea liked the idea of you having someone around to keep Zeb’s family in line if things got rough. And when my landlord asks a favor of me, I hop to.”
“How rough could his family be?” I scoffed.
“I saw the video from the Lavelle twins’ christening. Don’t even joke about it.”
* * *
I was fairly average in height, and it still took a boost from Jed to crawl into the cab of his truck. There were moving vans in Ireland that weren’t this large. When had American vehicles become such an . . . overcompensation? Still, the interior smelled pleasantly of pine air freshener and the woodsy aftershave Jed used. The seats had been recently vacuumed, and the dashboard shone. Had he gone out and cleaned the truck because he knew I would be riding in it all day . . . or because Dick had threatened him when he made his “request” and told him to treat me with kid gloves? I wasn’t sure which was the preferable, less invasive alternative.
I slid my sunglasses up on my nose, sipped my coffee, and rested my head against the seat, willing the vague headache located just above my eyebrows to go away. Jed seemed to sense that I needed quiet, so he remained silent as we coasted smoothly out of town, over the Tennessee River, and into central Kentucky. He eventually switched on a country-western station playing old Loretta Lynn songs. He asked about working in Boston, and I had to scramble for an answer. From what I remembered, my dad worked a lot of night shifts, and the morning commutes were a bear.
I repeated stories Dad had told me about working in the hospital where he practiced emergency medicine. Unfortunately, most of these stories had been edited for younger audiences, so they weren’t terribly interesting. But the more I talked, the more I was able to focus on the world rolling past the truck windows. We rolled through towns that were barely towns at all, just a few buildings cobbled together on a street, usually situated around railroad tracks. And then we drove through Nashville, bustling and alive with traffic and noise. And as soon as you adjusted to the urban landscape, boom, back in farm country.
The landscape was so different from the hills and seascape surrounding Kilcairy. Instead of the relentless emerald I was used to, there were dozens of shades of textured green. Instead of rolling, gentle hills that eventually rose into peaks, mountains seemed to spring up from nowhere. There were sections of road that took my breath away, random patches of bright-red poppies growing between the lanes, rushing creeks, and the occasional random monument in the middle of a cow pasture. Throughout this landscape were little neighborhoods of house trailers, long metal boxes with windows.
“Haven’t you ever seen them before?” Jed asked as I stared at another configuration of trailers on a hill.
“On television, maybe, but never up close. They look so small from here.”
“It’s not so bad. I grew up in one.”
“What was that like?”
“Crowded,” he admitted. “I have this huge family: three brothers, a sister, and myself. We played outside just so we could breathe our own air.”
“Did you all get along?”
“For the most part. I’m closest with my oldest brother, Jim. Sometimes the extended family was a different story. We argue over the usual stuff, you know, who borrowed whose lawnmower, who pinched whose wife’s ass at Christmas.”
“Actually, I don’t believe ass pinching comes up in normal family discourse.”
“Well, you’re a Yankee. Who knows what y’all talk about,” he said. “We moved from Louisiana to Tennessee about three generations ago, and my grandpa never quite got over it. He’s still pissed about it, to be honest with you, says he misses the bayou. It’s funny, ’cause he was a baby when the family moved away. He never really lived on the bayou. We’re the only family in Hazeltine with semi-Cajun accents. Anyway, we all settled on this farm in the 1920s. There was a main house, where my great-grandparents lived, and then we built a sort of complex of trailers around it.”
“I can sympathize,” I told him. “My family lives close together, too. Do you miss them?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But there are other times when I appreciate having all those rooms to myself in the Hollow. Not being able to see the inside of my house from one end to the other is a good thing.”
“Gets a little lonely, though,” I mused. “Do you have a young possum enthusiast waiting for you back home? I have noticed the distinct lack of Hollow girls doing the walk of shame from your front door.”>Pointing out that she didn’t get any time with me because she’d left us to go “find herself” would have been pointless, so I just said, “I’m not moving to Florida.”
“But, Nola, there’s nothing to keep you here.” Mom sniffed. “Now, I already packed your bag while your father was at work. He’ll post the rest of your things to Florida.”
“Anna, this is ridiculous. No matter how you try to strong-arm me, I won’t allow you to take her.”
“Be quiet, Martin,” she said, without even looking at him.
“I’m not moving to Florida,” I said again, my voice louder this time, begging my mother to hear me just this once.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said, giving her patronizing little sneer as she pushed me toward the foyer. “Stop being silly and get in the car.”
I planted my feet, and for the first time, I defied my mother. “No.”
