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“Uncle Seb?” she asks.
“Yep.” I sort through the rows, finding Kayla and Kylie but no Kayleigh. “Damn. Poor kid can’t ever find personalized stuff.”
“I know that feeling,” Birdy says drily, moving the sandwiches to the crook of one arm so she can poke through the rack next to the one I’m exploring.
“Oooh, look at this!” She triumphantly brandishes a little red airplane, sounding an awful lot like the vivacious bartender from last night. “You need it. You can hang it from your rearview mirror at work.”
I take the plastic toy from her hand and turn it to seeSebastianprinted on its body.
“Birdy,” I ask in a voice I’d use with a precocious first grader, “do you think Boeings have rearview mirrors?” I’m rewarded with a full-throated laugh. I haven’t heard it since last night, and despite everything that happened after, I’m transfixed.
“Well how else do you park them?” she asks, her voice all saucy innocence as she pokes at the toy dangling by its string from my fingers, making it spin. “This way you’ll always know which cockpit is yours.”
Now I’m laughing too, and I set it spinning in the opposite direction. “My copilot would be so jealous.”
“If I was celebrating Christmas this year, I’d buy it for you.”
Her smile dims, and before I make it weird by asking what’s making her so sad, she says, “You ready?”
I nod and put theSebastianplane back. “Ready.” Overreach averted.
Once we’re back on the road, we start in on the gas station sandwiches. I wish I knew what she was thinking as we do.
“So tell me about your niece.”
Apparently she’s thinking about my family.
“Three nieces, one nephew,” I say, setting my half-eaten turkey sandwich down so I can have both hands on the wheel as we round a curve in the interstate. It’s gotten even more treacherous while we were stocking up. We seem to be traveling the same path as the storm, and our progress is suffering because of it. “Ginny, Kayleigh, Madison, and Tristan. They’re hell-beasts, and I love them.”
“And your siblings?”
“They all belong to my oldest sister Celeste and her husband Aaron. Then my sister Darby’s a year ahead of me.”
“Is she the one getting engaged on Christmas morning?” I risk a glance at her, surprised she knows about that, and she shrugs. “You used it as a bargaining chip with Rochelle at the rental counter.”
“Right.” I wish I could feel worse about that, but it got me what I wanted. Maybe even more than that now that Birdy and I are having a semi-normal conversation. “That’s Darby. I gave her boyfriend a hard time when I met him last Christmas, but we’re tight now. I want to be there for it.”
I really, really want to be there for it. But I still took the time to joke about toy planes with Birdy just now. Best not to look too closely at that.
“Why didn’t you like him?”
It’s taking real effort to keep the car steady in this wind, and the visibility is shit. But Birdy’s less tense than she was before we stopped, when her hands were clenched in tight balls on her lap, so I keep talking. “Would you believe he was pretending to be a shitty boyfriend to teach her overbearing family a lesson?”
She snorts. “No way. That’s rom-com nonsense.”
“And yet.” I squint and lean forward in my seat, wondering if my brights might help with visibility. They don’t.
“For real?” She practically squeals it, and I’m thrilled to hear the animation in her voice. “Oh, that’s fun. I’m an only child, so sibling interactions are fascinating. My dissertation actually deals with birth order and communication patterns in familial relationships marked with abandonment.”
“Your dissertation?” I’m sure my surprise isn’t flattering, but shit, I’m surprised.
“Oh, did you think you scored with the hot bartender chick last night? Sorry, no.” She gives my leg a jokey pat. “You took home an overstressed grad student who only moonlights as a hot bartender chick.”
I shuffle through the bits that I know about her, but none of them add up to a full picture. “So the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee?”
“Yep. Sociology PhD.”
“Yet you bartend in Vermont.” This girl has me begging for whatever scraps of personal information she’s willing to part with, but as expected, she’s not forthcoming.
