“Bad news,” Palmer said, hopping off the trunk when she saw me coming.
“Me too,” I said, nodding to her. “You go first.”
“So Fitz says the car overheated,” she says. “He thinks we probably need to tow it, or at the very least, add coolant if we have it—”
“Which we don’t.”
“Or water to the engine, but only after we’ve let the car cool down.”
I felt my stomach sink. “How long is that going to take?”
Palmer winced. “He said to give it a couple of hours.”
“But—”
“I know,” she said, shaking her head. “What happened with your dad?”
“Nothing good,” I said with a sigh, wondering how it was possible to feel this exhausted when it was just a little after noon. “He didn’t listen to me and just—” I stopped when I heard my phone ringing in my bag. I pulled it out and saw it was my dad calling. “Hello?” I asked, utterly confused, wondering if it was Peter or someone calling from his phone. Because I was pretty sure my dad was still onstage at the moment.
“Hey,” my dad said, causing me to look over toward the stage, as though I could see anything there except faint dots.
“What—” I started. “How are you—”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said. “Where are you?”
“I’m in the parking lot with Palmer,” I said. “Oh—Palmer’s here. And the car overheated, and I really need to get to New Jersey. . . .” I trailed off, still trying to grasp what was happening. “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”
“So you need a ride,” my dad said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. “Want to use mine?”
? ? ?
“So this is a campaign bus,” Palmer said, from her seat by the row that surrounded a table, where strategy sessions usually took place. She ran her hand over the tabletop and nodded her approval. “I like it.”
“Explain it to me again,” I said, leaning more into the aisle. My dad was sitting across from me, in the aisle seat as well. He and Walt had picked us up in the TOWARD THE FUTURE bus, and my dad had called AAA to tow my car back to Stanwich. Peter was not on the bus, and I was pretty sure my dad had left him back at the fairgrounds, which Walt seemed particularly happy about.
My dad smiled and shook his head. “I told you, you should have stayed to hear it.”
“So . . . you didn’t let the governor say anything,” I said, now really regretting that I hadn’t stayed, if only to see the look on Peter’s face when things started going off script. “You just started talking?”
“I said I had an announcement,” my dad said. “And one that couldn’t wait.”
“People are talking about it online,” Palmer said, scrolling through her phone, and my dad let out a short laugh.
“I’m not surprised,” he said.
“Me either.” I was still trying to get my head around it. My dad had given the speech he’d planned to give all along, the one that Peter had no knowledge of—the speech that said he would finish out his term but would not run for another one. That he wanted to spend more time with his family.
“So what now?” I asked.
My dad took a deep breath and gave me a smile. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’m going to finish out my term and then . . . I guess I’ll figure it out.”
“So I bet Peter’s freaking out right about now,” I said, not quite able to stop myself from smiling.
My dad nodded. “Probably,” he said, then shrugged. “He’ll get over it. And if he doesn’t, it’s not really my issue any longer.”
“Congressman?” Walt called from the front of the bus. “I’m going to need an address. Unless you just want me to go back to the pickup spot?”
“Coming,” my dad said, ruffling my hair like he used to do when I was little, then making his way to the front of the bus.
I crossed back to join Palmer at the table. She was looking like I felt—a little stunned by everything that was happening. “Busy day,” she said, shaking her head, and I smiled as I sat in the seat across from her.
I nodded. “It has been.”
“And we’re still going to New Jersey,” Palmer said, fixing me with a look that let me know she wasn’t going to let me out of this. “We’ll just get my car and I’ll drive us.”
I nodded, pulling out my phone and looking at the time. I’d found the address of the bookstore on Clark’s website, and mapped it from Stanwich—it was still another hour to get there. It would be cutting it close, but we could almost make it. I wasn’t letting myself think about what would happen once I got there. For the moment it was enough to know that we were going. “Okay,” I said, nodding a few more times than I needed to. “Okay.”