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"You sure are uppity."

"You don't know the half of it," I muttered as I turned to purchase my apple and water.

"I like my bitches feisty and screaming. Makes for better rides."

I whirled around. "Really?" At this point, I needed to take him down for all the women who would come after me. I let my voice drop into what Angelica called my "ice queen" register. The one I'd perfected playing a federal prosecutor in a legal thriller two years ago.

"Bubba, I'm connected to people you can only dream about. I'm going to write down your license plate. I'm going to find out your name. Your address, your phone number, your wife's name and her phone number. I'm going to call her. I'm going to tell her about today's little incident. I'm going to make sure she understands the uncouth, misogynistic rodent she's married to. I'm going to give her the name of a divorce lawyer that I will personally pay for, just to take your ass to the cleaners. You're going to be lucky if you can afford a bicycle."

His face went white. "You c-c-can't do that, he stammered.

"Watch me."

"My wife, Lisa, she already..." He swallowed hard. "We have kids. She already hates me."

"Lisa's a smart woman."

I put a twenty on the counter and took my apple and bottle of water.

"But you can't do this," he cried after me.

I walked out of the store, pulled out my phone, and took a picture of his license plate. As he followed me, standing in the doorway gaping, I took a picture of him for good measure.

Angelica was leaning against the Corvette, sipping her Mountain Dew and watching the whole thing with raised eyebrows. "What was that all about?"

"I'll tell you when we're on the road. Just how good is your brother at getting information?"

"The best."

"Good." I slid into the passenger seat. "We're burning daylight. Let's start moving."

After the Bubba incident, I didn't think about the video for at least an hour, and it didn't hurt that Angelica kept up with an endless stream of family stories that had to be bullshit.

"So then Bruno says to the TSA agent, 'Sir, that's not a weapon, that's my grandmother's prosthetic leg,' and the agent says, 'Why isn't your grandmother wearing it?' And Bruno has to explain that Grandma Maureen thought it would be faster to hop through security on one leg than to deal with the metal detector."

"She didn't."

"She absolutely did. Caused a three-hour security shutdown at Dulles. Made the news and everything."

The mountains rose around us as we entered East Tennessee. The air grew cooler, scented with pine and earth instead of exhaust and swamp. Angelica had to stop two more times, but I'd stopped counting.

"Almost there," she announced as we passed a sign for Jasper Creek, five miles. "Fair warning, this place is tiny. Like, one traffic light tiny."

"Perfect. The smaller, the better."

"Oh, you have no idea. The biggest excitement last month was when someone's cow got loose and wandered into the courthouse."

"You're making that up."

"Ask anyone when we get there. The cow's name was Bessie, and she apparently had very strong opinions about property taxes."

“You’re wasted as an actress, you should be a screenwriter.”

She turned to me with a devilish grin. “I should, shouldn’t I?”

We drove through what Angelica generously called downtown, which consisted of a town square with a courthouse in the middle and small businesses lining three sides. A hardware store, a coffee shop called Java Jolt, an antiques store, and what looked like a dozen other family-owned shops that had probably been there since the town was founded.

"And here we are," Angelica announced, pulling into a parking space in front of a building with a hand-painted sign reading "Down Home Diner." "Fair warning, I really do need to pee again."

"How is that even possible?"

"Talent." She jumped out of the car. "Come on, you need real food anyway."

I followed her toward the door, my legs stiff from hours in the car. The smell of fried chicken and fresh biscuits wafted out, making my stomach growl. I hadn't eaten actual food since yesterday.

A cowbell clanged as we pushed through the door. The diner was exactly what you'd expect in small-town Tennessee. Red vinyl booths, checkered floor, and a counter with rotating stools. Every head in the place turned to look at us.

"Angelica!" A voice cried out from the hostess stand.

I turned to see the tiniest elderly woman I'd ever encountered. She couldn't have been more than four foot eight, with silver hair pinned up in a bun and wearing a flower-print dress that looked handmade. Her face lit up with joy as she spotted us.

This had to be the infamous Little Grandma.

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