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“She would,” he said.
“Where is she now?”Bea asked.
“Pittsburg,” he said.“She’s always moving jobs.Whatever will pay her more.This latest one, though, she’s been at for about a year.She got a promotion, and they wanted her to go to Pittsburg for management training.”
“What does she do?”
“She works for Associated Foods.”He shielded his eyes to find a spot, and because it wasn’t the summer season, they could set up camp anywhere.
“How close do you want to be?”he asked.
“Anywhere is fine,” she said.
He pulled the wagon only a little closer and then slightly away from the main path and dropped the handle.She spread out the blanket, and Grant put the massive picnic basket in the middle of it.He tucked the edge of the blanket under the wagon wheels, and she knelt beside the basket and opened it.
“I’ve got chicken salad croissants,” she said.“Or roast beef and provolone.”She looked at him, her eyebrows high.
“Both,” he said, his stomach roaring.She handed him two sandwiches and continued getting out a giant container of cut-up fruit, two bags of potato chips—one the cheddar sour cream flavor he loved—and an immaculate platter of brownies.
“My goodness,” he said.“Where did you get all of this?”
“I made a lot of it,” she said, flashing him a smile.She reached for the bottled water, and as she handed one to him, she asked, “Have you ever been to a National Park?”
Grant unwrapped his sandwich, thinking.“Maybe?I don’t know.There’s a lot of National land here.Marshes and beaches and such.But I don’t think that’s what you mean,”
“Nope.”She sat cross-legged and faced the ocean.Grant did love the water, the dull sound of it that never stopped.It especially surprised him at night, because he couldn’t see it, but the continual shushing noise of it could always be heard.
“I mean like Yellowstone or there’s a couple in Utah.Bryce Canyon, where you can hike down through these beautiful red rocks, or Zion National Park, where they’ve built a big tunnel right through the canyon walls.”
“Nothing like that,” he said.
“I want to go,” she said.“On my love list, I put I wanted to visit ten National Parks.”
Grant watched her, wondering why she was telling him this.“You’re planning your next trip,” he said, unsure if he was happy for her or devastated that she didn’t want to rent his beach cottage indefinitely.He had blocked off the next few weeks just in case she wanted to return after going to see her daughter in Austin.
I’m thinking about it.
Thinkingwasn’t the same ascommittingto come back.He knew that.He did.Sometimes his hope made a fool of him.
“No,” she said.Her head drooped, and she added, “Maybe.Just one list.And do you know what’s at the top of it?”
“What?”Grant reached for his favorite potato chips, trying to remember if he’d told her he liked these or not.They’d talked a lot over the past several days, big things, little things, all kinds of things.
“I wanted to ask you if you’d plan a trip to see a National Park with me.”
Grant forgot about the potato chips then.His mind blanked, but he managed to meet her eyes.
“Don’t look so surprised,” she said, smiling and returning her gaze to the horizon in front of them.“I don’t just go around kissing every man I meet when I travel.”
“I know,” Grant said, because he’d never once thought that Bea hadn’t meant to kiss him.She wasn’t the kind of woman who did things she didn’t want to do, which was why the need she felt to do what her friends required of her seemed odd to Grant.
“I brought a notebook,” she said.“If you want to start making a list with me.”
He chuckled, because Bea and her heart-shaped face had made such an impression in his life, and he loved—absolutely loved—her lists.
“I’d love to help you make a list,” he said, and as he took another bite of his delicious sandwich, she squealed and lunged for her spotted cow-purse to retrieve her notebook.
