Page 14 of Hideaway Whirlwind
I nod when the answer is actuallyno, but who cares? Not me.
“Oh,” Sydney says as if something has just clicked, finally making sense of things. She sits on the floor with her legs crossed like a pretzel, peeling open an orange for Kendall, spilling juice down her forearms to drip onto her nightgown. “Are you my grandpa? How come I never met you?”
I don’t have to answer since Birdie does so for me. “No, baby, I told you. He’s just helping us out for a little bit. We’re not related.”
Paradise shattered.
“Gu-pa, Gu-pa!” Kendall squeals, clapping her hands together and jumping maybe an inch off the ground before losing her balance and falling on her butt.
“Grand–pa,” Dustin sounds out.
“No! Gu-pa,” Kendall insists.
They go back and forth a few times until they settle on something Kendall can pronounce:Papa.
“I think I’ve been upgraded from Santa,” I say with as muchbreath as I can muster beneath Birdie’s feet and my crushing grief and longing that I really were their papa. With my back no longer spasming, I suddenly push up off the floor, catching Birdie before she can fall after being unbalanced. As soon as her feet are flat on the carpet, I head into the restroom to be by myself.
Chapter 7
Teagan
“Soooo,” I start off slowly, trying to make conversation. Anything to pass the monotonous time as I sit wedged between the two front seats on the floor instead of buckling myself into the passenger seat like Elliott keeps asking me to. “Have you always wanted to be a truck driver?”
Elliott grunts a non-answer.
I frown, picking at my sore cuticles. Elliott is always quiet while driving, but there’s a different quality to it this time. A heaviness in the air that even the kids can sense, keeping their voices low despite hating being cooped up in their seats again. I have to wonder if his mood has anything to do with what I told him or the way I touched him last night, having woken up with my fingers running through his thick hair before falling back to sleep. Had he been awake? And why was he sitting up in the first place? Maybe it had something to do with his back.
Crap. I’ve done a bang-up job of making everything weird, and he probably thinks I’m a freak.
Elliott sighs heavily, as if begrudgingly deciding to answer me. “I wanted to be a deputy.”
“Really?” I ask, perking up. “So why did you choose trucking? Because of your brother?”
He shakes his head, tugging his collar away from his neck. “It wasn’t a choice,” he mumbles, hardly moving his lips.
It wasn’t a choice. His answer has me reevaluating how much more I want to know about him, and choosing, rather, to scoot away from him, closer to my kids. I end up making my pinky nail bleed when I chew it past the quick, growing increasingly nervous as my mind spins theories as to why he couldn’t become a deputy.He’s bad news, and I don’t need any more of that in my life.
* * *
The temperature falls as the weather worsens after crossing the border into Texas, but Elliott pushes through, probably looking forward to the moment he can drop us off at Marigold’s house. I’m looking forward to it, too, if only so I don’t end up making things weirder. I’ve also run out of clean clothes to wear beneath the flannel that Elliott hasn’t asked me to return yet, since I didn’t pack nearly as much for myself as I did for the kids, so everything needs a good washing.
Elliott grunts as he carefully slows the truck to avoid rear-ending a small sports car that cuts him off suddenly, swerving around an accident in the left lane where a pickup truck looks to have spun out. He mutters curses under his breath as traffic slows even more due to the snow sticking to the ground, which he says is highly unusual since it typically melts soon after falling.More bad news.
“Should we pull over and get another motel room?” I ask, holding onto the front seats, the wipers swishing across thewindshield at top speed, visibility dangerously low.
“Probably,” he says with a croak, his voice rusty after so many silent hours. “But last time I checked, the news said the storm is now supposed to hold for the next three days. Without salt trucks down here, we’d be stranded for who knows how long.”
Dustin and Sydney both whine from the back. “Not again,” Sydney says. “It’s so boring.”
Though I’ll takeboringany day over the fear and chaos we’re used to, I don’t contradict her.
* * *
“Almost there,” Elliott says, too manyboringhours later, when a large, silver lake ahead comes into view.
“Yay!” The kids cheer in their seats, their voices growing louder with excitement that the trip is nearly over.
I feel the same way, my eyes growing hot and my heart beating faster. This is it. We really, truly, finallygot out. I almost can’t believe this is real.
