“You shouldn’t drive and talk at the same time,” Ben scolds.
I roll my eyes at him, but I pull on to the shoulder.
“Where are you now?” Tricia doesn’t ask me who answered or why I’m not in Tacoma like I said I would be. It’s never been her way to worry about the details.
“I don’t know. About twenty miles outside of Laughlin. On Highway 95.”
“Have you passed Las Vegas yet?”
“No. It’s not for another forty miles or so.”
I hear her sigh with relief. “Good. There’s a one-thirty nonstop flight on Southwest from Vegas to Spokane. Think you can make it?”
“I think so.”
I hear Tricia say something and in the background, lots of voices. “Okay, we’ll book you on that. If you miss it, there’s another after, but it connects through Portland, so you’d have to change planes.” I listen to her talk, like she’s some kind of travel agent, like we do this all the time, when in fact I’ve never been on an airplane before.
“Call me once you’re on the plane so I’ll know when to pick you up. They don’t let you go to the gate anymore, apparently, so I’ll meet you down at baggage claim.”
“Okay,” I say. Like any of this makes sense to me.
“I’ll text you the flight information,” she says, and I’m at once grateful to Raymond for introducing her to this technology. “And I’ll see you this afternoon. I’ll get you home.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“What are moms for?”
I hang up and look at Ben, who’s looking at me, confused, though I can tell he heard both sides of the conversation.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m gonna get out in Vegas, fly the rest of the way home.”
“Why?”
“It’ll be easier, faster for you; you won’t have to go out of your way.” The route from here to Seattle passes right through my part of eastern Washington, and now he’ll have to drive those thousand miles alone. But I am making it easier for him. That part is true.
We spend the next hour in silence. We get to the Las Vegas airport around noon. I pull in to the loading zone, where the cars are parked two abreast. Behind us, there’s beeping, mad rushing, like cowboys, moving the cattle along. I grab my things and Ben gets out of the passenger side, watching me.
I turn to him. He’s standing there, leaning up against the car. I know I have to say something. To thank him. To release him. Maybe releasing him is the way to thank him. But before I say anything, he asks, “What are you doing, Cody?”
It hurts. It all hurts so much. But this is wrong. In so many ways. So I say to him what I said all those months back, though there’s nothing flip about it. It’s maybe the most you can wish for anyone.
“Have a good life,” I say. And then I slam the door shut behind me.
40
Tricia picks me up at baggage claim just like she promised, and marches me to the car. As soon as my seat belt is snapped, she orders: “Talk.”
Strangely, it’s not the part with Ben I’m worried about. Telling Tricia I ran off to Nevada with some guy I tossed my virginity to—that part comes out easy. She doesn’t look delighted about it, but once she’s certain that we used protection and used it properly and is suitably reassured that no pregnancy will result, she lets that part go.
“But why were you in Laughlin?” she asks me.
This is the thing I’m scared to tell her. And not for the reason I’ve been telling myself, which is that she’ll blab it all over town, though she might.
Tricia went with me to most of Meg’s memorial services. She wore her hotsy black dress and got dewy-eyed at all the appropriate parts. But we have hardly spoken about Meg dying. About Meg choosing to die. There was only that one conversation in my bedroom a few weeks ago. It’s been pretty clear she doesn’t want to talk about it, or hear about it. For all her talk of Meg and me being different, I think she worries that we aren’t.
When I finally tell her about Bradford and the Final Solution boards, she doesn’t seem completely surprised. “Mrs. Banks said something intense was going on with you and that computer.”
“Mrs. Banks? When did you talk to her?”
“Who do you think helped me book your ticket?”
So Tricia’s already been talking about me in town. But it doesn’t feel bad. Not at all, actually. It’s like I have allies.
“How was your first flight, by the way?” Tricia asks.
I’d spent the duration of it staring at the parched landscape below, tracing the path Ben and I took on the drive down, trying not to think about him on his solo return trip.
“Fine.”
We pull on to I-90, and I start to tell her about Bradford. About making myself bait. I tell her how persuasive he was, how he started an echo chamber in my head. I tell her about everything, except the detour to Truckee. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m trying to spare her, but I don’t think so. I’ve lost a lot recently, and a father—well, you can’t lose what you never had.
I keep waiting for her to get furious, but instead, when I tell her some of the things Bradford wrote to me, she looks terrified. “And you went and confronted him?” she asks.
I nod.
“I can’t believe I . . .” She trails off. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me too.” I say. “I’m sorry. It was stupid.”
“Yeah, I’ll say.” She reaches over to stroke my cheek. “It was also brave.”
I manage a smile. “Maybe.”
She guns the engine and pushes us into the fast lane. Then, after a while, she says, “You have to tell the Garcias. You know that, right?”
And the gloom and guilt fall as fast as a winter sunset. “It’ll break their hearts.”
“Their hearts are already broken,” Tricia says. “But maybe it’ll help mend yours, and right now, we’d all settle for that.”
x x x
When we get back in town, Tricia drives past our house, and even though I’m exhausted and about to dissolve into a million pieces, I let her take me where she’s taking me.
“I gotta get to work,” she says, pulling into the Garcias’ driveway. “I’ll see you later.”
“Thank you,” I say. I hug her across the stick shift. Then I grab my file on Meg, Bradford, and Final Solution, and head toward the front door.
Scottie opens up.
“Hey, Runtmeyer,” I say softly.
“Hi, Cody,” he says, and he seems embarrassed, or maybe he’s pleased, by the return of this nickname. “It’s Cody,” he calls into the house.
Sue comes out, wiping her hands on an apron. “Cody! You finally came for dinner. Can I make you a plate?”
“Maybe later. I need to talk to you about something.”
Her expression falters. “Come in,” she says. “Joe,” she calls. “Cody’s here. Scottie, go play upstairs.”
Scottie gives me a look, and I shrug.
Joe and Sue go into the darkened dining room, which has a fancy wood table that we used to eat family dinners around. Now it is piled with papers and other signs of disuse. “What is it, Cody?” Joe asks.
“There’s some things I need to tell you, about Meg. About her death.”
They both nod, reach for each other’s hands.
“I know she killed herself. I’m not saying she didn’t. But you need to know that she was involved with this group . . .” I begin. “It calls itself a suicide support group, but it’s the kind of support that encourages people to kill themselves, and I think that’s why she did it.”
I watch their faces, awaiting their horror, but they are kind, expectant, waiting for me to continue. And it hits me: this is old news.
“You know?”
“We know,” Sue says quietly. “It was in the police report.”
“It was?”
Sue nods. “They said it explained how she got that poison. It’s common with those groups.”
“The Final Solution.” Joe practically spits the words. “That’s what the Nazis called the Holocaust. Meg knew that. I can’t believe she’d fall into a group that used that as its name.”
“Joe.” Sue puts her hand on his arm.
“So the police found the encrypted files? They know about Bradford?” I’m confused. Bradford didn’t seem to know anything about Meg’s death.
Now Joe and Sue look confused, too. “What files?”
“On Meg’s computer. In her trash.”
“I don’t know about that,” Sue says. “They just said they found evidence that Meg was involved with this group from her Internet searches.”