Chapter 2 #2
I squeeze my backpack between my sneakers, giving Mrs. Nash a little makeshift hug as I remember promising her I would find Elsie. It was right after she told me their story.
I just wish I could have said a proper goodbye, told her how much I still loved her , she whispered, blowing her nose into the tissue she kept tucked into her stretchy silver watchband. Even after she died, she never felt gone to me. She still doesn’t .
What if I can find out where she’s buried? I asked. Then we can go visit.
Oh, Millie, but what would be the point?
So I can meet her . I smiled up at Mrs. Nash from my spot on the floor.
You’re such a silly thing , Mrs. Nash said, returning my smile. She called me a “silly thing” with such regularity and with such affection that it was better than any standard term of endearment. Well, I suppose, if you find the time to search that internet of yours—
I’ll make the time , I announced. I want to reunite you with Elsie, however symbolically .
Of course, I didn’t make the time until it was already too late. Mrs. Nash passed away in March, and I never got to tell her that the love of her life hadn’t died in Korea after all.
But now Elsie actually is living out her last days in hospice care at a Key West nursing facility, and I can’t afford any delays.
That’s why I dug into my Penelope to the Past money—“That’s supposed to be for your retirement!
” I could almost hear my father shouting as I moved the funds over to my checking account—to spring for an outrageously expensive plane ticket and hotel rooms during one of the busiest travel holidays of the year instead of waiting until next week.
“It means more than anything,” I tell Hollis.
“I suppose a thousand dollars is fair, then.”
“What?”
“As payment. For me to take you to Miami.”
“No way,” I say. “I offered to pay you and you said no. ‘Not enough cinnamon rolls in the world,’ remember?”
“I just saved you from getting stranded in Charlotte. Or worse. I think I deserve some sort of compensation for helping you, yet again.”
“I never asked for your help. And Mike was a very nice man. I would’ve been perfectly safe with him.”
“Again, less concerned about Mike than whomever you might’ve stumbled upon after him.” Hollis flails his right hand in the air. “That wide-eyed, trusting thing you have going on practically screams ‘Hey, come murder me and wear my skin!’?”
I snort. “Do you always assume the worst of people?”
“Yes. Do you always assume the best?”
“Usually.”
“ Faaantastic ,” he says through clenched teeth. The word acts like punctuation, announcing that the conversation has come to an end as far as he’s concerned.
However, I don’t do well with silence. “So,” I say. “What kind of stuff do you write?”
Authors are practically bound by law to answer this question. “Nonfiction novels, mostly. My first book’s being published in November. It’s about a pyramid scheme that caused all sorts of scandal in a small town in Minnesota.”
“Nonfiction novels? So, like, In Cold Blood ?”
He contemplates the comparison, then concedes, “This one has less murder and more casseroles, but basically yes.”
“Wow. Sounds great. I’ll have to preorder it.”
To my surprise, Hollis smiles. It’s the smallest smile I’ve seen on anyone ever, really only visible at the corners of his mouth, but it’s something. If he knows this is my go-to line for meeting authors that I perfected while dating Josh, he doesn’t seem willing to call me out on it.
“And you?” he asks. “What does Millicent Watts-Cohen do when she’s not fending off creeps or jumping into cars with randos?”
“I’ve been freelancing as a historical accuracy consultant for TV and film for the last few months.
I did some research to help out a director friend while I was finishing up my master’s.
She recommended me to others in the industry.
There’s a lot more demand than I expected.
Apparently, Hollywood people still think of me as one of them, and they like keeping everything in the family, so to speak. ”
“Your master’s is in history then?”
“Yeah. I’ve always been interested in it. Plus, it felt necessary to somehow atone for Penelope ’s sins. And there were a lot of them. I mean, there’s an Appomattox episode that extremely does not hold up.” He doesn’t comment. “Did you watch the show?”
“My sister did.”
“But you didn’t?”
He raises one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I caught bits and pieces of episodes here and there, but it wasn’t really my thing.”
It’s a relief that Hollis is probably not doing all of this for me because I’m ever so slightly famous or because he’s hoping to role-play some weird teenage sexual fantasy.
I’m basically an E-list celebrity, or maybe even F-list if it goes that low, but you’d be surprised how many people are only interested in knowing me because of that. Like Josh, it turns out.
Thinking about my ex makes me remember what Hollis said about him, about how Josh has been telling his friends—and frenemies, apparently—that we split because I’m too impossible, strange, needy.
And that makes me get that sinking feeling that accompanies knowing there’s someone out there who doesn’t like me.
It’s never fun, but it’s so much worse when it’s someone I assumed I would marry one day.
I reach for the stereo, hoping for a distraction. When I press the button to turn it on, a velvety voice fills the car, talking with sharp enunciation about the flight cancelation hullabaloo.
“What is this?”
“WAMU.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“What do you have against NPR?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s great. I have the utmost respect for public radio. But it’s a horrible soundtrack for a road trip.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have a perfectly curated playlist with which to caress your discerning ears.”
“That’s okay.” I pull my phone out of my backpack’s front pocket.
“I’ve got us covered.” I dig around until I find my aux cord, and soon The Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky” fills the car.
My mouth opens to belt out the lyrics, but I’m not a talented singer—like, I’m actually objectively bad—and it’s probably too early to subject Hollis to that.
Making someone’s ears bleed isn’t a great way to show your appreciation.
So I restrain myself, settling for swaying in my seat.
Of course, by the time we get to the chorus, there’s some shimmying and eyes-closed head bobbing going on too.
“What’s going on over there?” Hollis asks. “Do you need to pee already?”
“I’m dancing.”
“Of course you are.”
The playlist I made this morning for driving from Miami to Key West is on shuffle, but as the next song starts, I decide I’m quite pleased with the music app’s choices.
“God, I love Steely Dan,” I say, adjusting my swaying to the more subdued tempo of “Dirty Work.” “I actually just found this album on vinyl at a record store in Silver Spring last week.” I bought it even though I don’t currently own a record player; Geoffrey’s daughter wound up with Mrs. Nash’s.
Hollis groans. “When I agreed to let you come with me, I didn’t realize you were secretly my uncle Jim in a tiny woman costume.”
“I bet your uncle Jim doesn’t have my moves.” I gyrate in my seat in time to the saxophone solo.
Hollis watches me out of the corner of his eye—the blue-gray one. “That he does not.”
Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” comes on next, but before the end of the first line, Hollis says, “Ugh. Can we please listen to something else?”
“Excuse me, do you have something against Stevie Nicks?”
“Her voice sort of gets on my nerves.”
I sit in stunned silence, attempting to find a suitable reaction to this blasphemy. I finally land on a simple, “How dare you. How dare you.”
Hollis reaches over and turns off the stereo.
“Hey!” I go up an octave in my outrage.
I think I see the slightest tilt of his mouth into a smile again, which only annoys me further. How dare he disrespect Stevie Nicks and sort of almost smirk about it! The impudence .
“Tell me more about this mission of yours,” he says.
I fold my arms over my chest, pouting. “What about it?”
“Like... why? Clearly, it wasn’t a priority for your friend to get back to this old lover.”
“It was, though,” I say. “She wanted to find her, more than anything. But I’d only just started looking when Mrs. Nash died.”
“Her?” The eyebrow over the blue-gray eye raises.
“Yes. Elsie. They met during the war.”
“The war?” he asks. “Vietnam?”
“World War Two.”
Hollis lets out a whistle through his teeth. “Man. That’s a long time ago.”
“Yeah. Well,” I say. “So are a lot of things.”
“I guess I wonder why any business left unfinished after so many years shouldn’t remain unfinished.”
“Because she didn’t mean to leave it unfinished in the first place. Mrs. Nash and Elsie kept in touch at first, after the war ended. They wrote tons of letters. But then... it’s complicated.”
“Millicent. We’re going to be stuck in this car together for hours. I’d much rather hear a long and complicated story than listen to middle-aged-man music the entire time. Go ahead.”
“All of it?” I know this story by heart.
In fact, I have thought about it every day since Mrs. Nash told me how she and Elsie met.
But I’ve never had to tell it to someone else before.
It’s intimidating. What if I can’t do it justice?
And something tells me Hollis Hollenbeck isn’t exactly a romantic.
I swear, if he disrespects Mrs. Nash and Elsie like he disrespected Stevie Nicks—
“Well, why don’t we start with the beginning and see where we wind up.”
“Okay, fine,” I say. “So...”