Page 14 of Longest Ride

Dad sat in the break room with a coffee in front of him and I heard him calling Annie to see how she was doing with the Tammy situation.

“How bad did the storm hit you up there, Annie?”

I sat down across from him, and he put the call on speaker so I could hear it.

“The roads won’t be plowed until noon or after, so we’re kind of stuck for now.”

“So, you couldn’t take Tammy to the hospital last night?”

“No. We couldn’t go.”

I rolled my eyes at Virge, but he was clueless. I hadn’t told him yet and wasn’t sure I was going to.

Billy came into the break room and handed me a piece of paper. “You and Virge can take this call. I gave Ted a shout out and he’ll be waiting for your call if you need the tow truck.”

“Okay, sure. We’ll take this one.” I read the location Billy had written down. Intersection of I-15 and highway two. “Yep. Might be on one of the ramps. Those get slippery. We’ll go take a look. Come on Virgie. Zip up that parka you love so much.”

He laughed. “Hey, Dad was right about these coats keeping us warm.”

“Wear your gloves, Virgie,” barked Travis.

“Copy on the gloves, Dad.”

I-15 Interchange.

On the drive to the accident site, I decided to tell Virge about the call from Mom. “Annie called me this morning while I was at the barn.”

“Sorry, I slept right through chores, Harlan. Don’t know when I’ve been so fuckin tired.”

“That’s okay. I didn’t wake you up. I managed.”

“What did Mom say was going on up there on the side of the fuckin mountain? My God, that was far away from the rest of the world.”

“Yeah, for sure. She told me some stuff and none of it was good.”

“Did you tell Dad?”

“No. Annie doesn’t want him to know yet. She’s trying to find Tammy first, or at least get a read on which way she went.”

“What do you mean—find Tammy first? Didn’t we already find her?”

“Tammy is acting crazy, and Mom is so fuckin mad at her, Virge.”

“What did she do? She should’ve taken that Ram and come home when she got away from the kidnappers. That was the first stupid thing she did and I’m not over it. Might never be fuckin over it.”

“Yeah, that was a dumb move for sure, but she’s adding to the stupid list.”

“How stupid was it?” Virge put his hands over his ears, then he took them away so he could hear me.

“Mom said Tammy sneaked out in the middle of the night and drove the semi to the hospital and took that long-haul trucker out of his bed and hit the fuckin road.”

“What?” Virge grabbed his long hair and tugged on it. “That is totally insane, Harlan. Why would she do something that fuckin crazy?”

“I don’t know. Mom asked me to put a BOLO out on the truck because she didn’t know how to do it.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah.”

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