A Thousand Little Goodbyes
Chapter One Medford, OR Present Day
Chapter One
Medford, OR
Present Day
“Are you okay stopping to see a two-headed calf, or does that hit a little too close to home?”
Chrissie Thomas glanced up from the map spread out in front of her, the pucker in her brow deepening as the May sunrise smacked her straight in the face.
“A two-headed calf?” she echoed. She dropped her finger to the route she’d been studying so she could return to it once Scarlett finished explaining this bizarre new conversational thread.
Based on personal experience—twenty-seven years of it, in fact—this could take anywhere from a few minutes to several days.
When it came to talking, Scarlett Sanderson was queen, king, and royal consort all in one.
“Yeah. According to this website, one head is named Peter and the other is Paul. For twenty bucks, you can get your picture taken with them. That sounds fun, right? Very P. T. Barnum. Unless you think it might upset you, in which case we’ll skip it.
There’s a giant ball of twine in Minnesota that should scratch the same itch. ”
Chrissie gave up on holding her place and folded the map—a throwback Scarlett had wheedled out of the gas station attendant to create a “more authentic road-trip experience.” If Chrissie had been working at that gas station, she’d have taken one look at the RAV4 Hybrid they’d rented for the trip, plus the exquisite camel-colored cashmere sweat suit Scarlett was wearing, and demanded every penny.
But Scarlett had flirted and laughed and told her entire life’s story to the poor man until he’d had no other choice.
Charmed against his will—as people often were when the petite, lively brunette entered their orbit—he’d hand-selected the most useful maps, offered them free of charge, and even threw in a pack of meat sticks for good measure.
“I guess it depends on how well the calf—calves?—are being treated,” Chrissie said. “Is it a nice place, or are their living conditions just going to make me sad?”
“The calf’s not alive, Chrissie. He’s taxidermied.
In fact, this place has been around for like sixty years, so there’s a good chance someone’s great-grandpa just sewed the head of one animal onto another and has been using it to make money off tourists ever since.
” Scarlett paused, her lips forming a thoughtful moue.
Scarlett was the only person Chrissie had ever met whose every action demanded a French description.
She made moues and fell into bouts of ennui.
She drank aperitifs and flaunted her décolletage at every opportunity.
The only French thing Chrissie could claim coming into contact with recently was of the toast variety.
“If he’s stuffed, it’s probably okay,” Chrissie said, confused. “But I don’t understand…”
Scarlett turned to face her. They were parked outside a gas station in Medford, Oregon, where their two-week cross-country journey was slated to begin.
Since Scarlett had insisted they start early—which, as a morning radio personality, meant somewhere in the region of four o’clock in the wee hours—they had the whole place to themselves.
“You know what I mean. With your whole thing.” Scarlett waved a vague hand in Chrissie’s direction.
Chrissie glanced down. She was also dressed in oversized sweats, though hers were a much more affordable Walmart set, her brown hair swept up in a messy knot at the top of her head.
It would have been easy to read censure into her friend’s gesture, especially considering the outrage Scarlett had shown when Chrissie arrived at the door with her feet in a pair of oversized rainbow Crocs, but Chrissie didn’t think her studied lack of fashion was the punch line this time.
“My thing,” she echoed slowly.
Scarlett gestured again, even more vaguely than before. “Yeah. You know. Your whole devoured my twin in utero thing.”
“Wait. Are you serious?” She almost believed Scarlett was serious for half a second before common sense caught up with her. “You wretch. Stop trying to rile me up. You don’t honestly believe I’m walking around with my unborn twin’s head sprouting out of my body.”
“I mean, I don’t know how it works.” Scarlett blinked innocently at her across the console, but the twinkle in her dark brown eyes was unmistakable. “You have always been weird about wearing a bathing suit in public.”
Chrissie gave in with a laugh. That, more than anything, confirmed her belief that this road trip was a good thing—a necessary thing.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed out loud, let alone at this hour.
For the past few months, most of her mornings had been spent in the cold, stony silence of a teenager’s wrath.
“I’m carrying around a tiny bit of extra DNA, Scarlett. It’s not like I’m not walking around with random body parts in unladylike places.”
“Huh.” Scarlett made a face. “Is it bad I’m disappointed by that?”
“Yes,” came Chrissie’s quick reply. “But bless your heart for asking. I can’t believe it took you this long to work up the nerve.”
“Well, I didn’t want to seem intrusive.” Scarlett’s sudden peal of laughter matched Chrissie’s own.
“Though I did used to sneak a peek whenever you changed into pajamas when we were kids. You were always so secretive about it, like showing a flash of stomach would put you on the straight path to hell. Which is a shame, because you’ve always had the most amazing body. ”
Chrissie rolled her eyes and started up the car.
If she knew Scarlett—and she did—the two-headed calf would only be the first of many such stops.
They had fourteen entire days to make their way from Chrissie’s home in Oregon to the tiny village in Vermont where Scarlett promised a “mystery surprise” awaited them.
Scarlett would want to visit every roadside attraction and hole-in-the-wall diner along the way, making the most of a vacation they’d spent the better part of their late teens and twenties promising they’d take before they reached the ripe age of thirty.
They’d reached thirty over four years ago without so much as a weekend girl’s trip to take the edge off, but that was more Chrissie’s fault than Scarlett’s.
Scarlett might have been a recognizable name in the talk-radio circuit, living her glamorous life in a sugary confection of a condo in downtown San Francisco, but Chrissie was the one with dentist appointments to schedule and volleyball tournaments to chaperone, not to mention an elderly cat with cystitis that caused him to pee on literally every rug in the house.
Despite Rufio’s advanced years—the cat had to be, what, twenty by now?
—he showed no desire to cross the rainbow bridge.
The dratted animal would end up outliving them all, and since Chrissie had faithfully promised the previous owners of her house that she’d take care of him after they moved to Hawaii, she had no choice but to see him through to the end.
“If you had to humanely dispose of a cat, how would you do it?” Chrissie asked as she pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed in the direction of the freeway.
“Drown him,” Scarlett responded without hesitation. She slipped a pair of oversized Gucci sunglasses over her eyes and settled back against the seat.
“Scarlett!”
Her friend’s rich chuckle sounded again, filling the whole car with its warmth. That laugh was the main reason why her radio show, Scarlett Sunrise, was so popular. Five million listeners a week plugged in to that sound—no small feat when radio had been on the decline for years.
“What? You forget I’ve been to your house. I don’t care how many candles and air fresheners you use. Nothing short of burning the whole thing down will get rid of that smell.”
“I know.” Chrissie heaved a sigh. “But Rufio can’t seem to help himself.”
Scarlett slipped the sunglasses down, piercing Chrissie with the rich chocolate of her gaze. “You know the people who sold you that house didn’t actually move to Hawaii, right?”
“What?” Chrissie touched the brakes a little too hard, sending them both lurching against their seat belts. “What are you talking about? Of course they did. It’s why they left Rufio behind. They said it would be cruel to make him go through all the state quarantine requirements at his age.”
Scarlett’s response to this was a slow shake of her head. “You poor, deluded fool. I’m pretty sure they only went as far as Ashland. They took one look at you, read your full measure, and saw a chance of escape. I bet their new house smells amazing—nary a whiff of ammonia anywhere.”
Chrissie opened her mouth and closed it again, not so much at a loss for words as she was coming to the realization that Scarlett was right.
“So that’s why they blocked my Facebook friend request. And here I thought I must’ve done something to upset them.”
Scarlett clucked her tongue the way she always did when she was annoyed with Chrissie. But then she softened it by reaching over and patting Chrissie’s gray-sweats-clad knee.
She always did that, too. Sweet with the sour. Pleasure with the pain.
“If ever I have a cat that needs killing, you’re the last person on earth I’d turn to.” Scarlett winked. “But if I want someone to drop everything for two weeks and come with me on the trip of a lifetime, then you’re exactly my gal.”
* * *
Peter and Paul weren’t sewn together, but they were preserved in an enormous formaldehyde jar, which somehow seemed worse.
“Well, that was a bust,” Scarlett said as she handed over the twenty bucks and accepted the glossy photo the proprietor printed out from his home computer.
They’d been forced to sit and make idle chitchat with his wife while the image took shape.
“You look cute, though, so that’s something.
You should set this as your Tinder profile and see what happens. ”