Rebecca nodded and pulled the phone out of her bag.
“Wait.”
Rebecca looked up at Cait, her finger hovering over the power button. “What?”
Cait ran a hand across her mouth. “While you’ve got it out, can you look up the nearest gas station?”
She shook her head. “I still don’t have service.”
Cait cursed under her breath.
“Are we running really low?” Rebecca asked, a flutter of nerves batting around in her stomach.
“No, not too bad.” There was a tightness in her voice that Rebecca didn’t like. Her eyes moved to the gas needle. It was deep in the red. Cait caught the look on Rebecca’s face and smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ve driven on empty for miles and miles before. The gauge isn’t right.”
“How long do you think until the next town?”
“I’m not sure. It can’t be too far, though, and I think the next town along is pretty big. We shouldn’t have a problem finding somewhere to fill up.”
Rebecca could tell Cait was bluffing. She didn’t like the idea of stopping—not after the man in the diner, not after the truck—but she liked the idea of running out of gas in the middle of the desert even less.
Her eyes wandered over to the needle on the gas gauge. “Do you have a map in the glove compartment? I could see if there’s anything marked out on it.”
Cait shook her head. “I’ve done this route before,” she said. “It’s just a straight shot on 60. I didn’t think I’d need a map.” She had the good grace to look faintly embarrassed. Of course she wouldn’t have a map, Rebecca reminded herself. She’s a kid. Though, saying that, when was the last time she herself had used a map?
She had a flash of the trips she’d taken with her parents as a kid, her dad driving while her mom wrestled to read one of the huge maps they’d been sent by AAA. Her mother hadn’t liked to fly. No matter how many times Rebecca’s father had explained the mechanics to her, she still didn’t trust the idea of something that big and that heavy somehow ascending into the sky. When her father was still in the navy and scattered all over the globe, her mother had forced herself to fly—she’d pop a Valium, go to sleep, and wake up in a different time zone, groggy and disoriented and faintly surprised by her survival—but once he retired and they settled in Alameda, she declared her flying days were over. “Emergencies only,” she used to say, though she would never be drawn out on what constituted an emergency. She didn’t board another plane for the rest of her life.
That meant that Rebecca’s childhood vacations were limited to places within driving distance of their house. Not that there wasn’t a ton to see around there—they’d gone to Big Sur and Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon by the time she was ten. These trips were rarely planned. She would just wake up one Saturday morning and the station wagon would be packed and she would be told to brush her teeth and wash her face and be down in the car in ten minutes. She would grab a stack of books and her Discman and the pillow from her bed, and within the hour they’d be driving over the San Rafael Bridge or down through San Jose, the morning light streaming through the windows while U2 played tinnily through her headphones.
Once, when her mother had declared a desire to see snow, they had driven up through Northern California and Oregon and most of Washington to the border with British Columbia. Rebecca could still remember the slap of cold air on her cheeks when she opened the car door, and the soft crunch of the snow underneath her unsuitably thin sneakers.
She felt the familiar ache in the center of her breastbone. God, she missed them.
Cait was watching her again. The earlier severeness had been washed away, replaced by a careful, solicitous kindness. “Are you feeling okay?” she asked gently, and Rebecca realized that she was apologizing.
The truth was, she was too hot and nauseated, and there was a headache blooming at the center of her forehead, right between her eyes. “I’m okay,” she lied.
“Well, just let me know if you need anything.”
Rebecca nodded. “Thanks.” She let the silence lie between them for a few seconds. “It’s my husband,” she said finally. “That’s why I keep checking my phone. He’s away on business, and sometimes