Page 28 of Famous for a Living

I point to the photo. “Who’s that?”

His eyes follow the direction of my finger. He pauses, as though he’d forgotten it was there entirely. Replies reluctantly, “No one. Just someone I used to know.”

There’s silence, then to my surprise he makes a sudden move and pulls the photo off the dashboard. Sets it in the pocket of his door beside a crumpled wrapper as though it, too, will be tossed in the trash later.

So, old girlfriend. And here I am, witness to the moment he declutters her from his life.

This drive just gets better and better.

A rifle is locked into position behind our heads, no doubt part of his line of work. A drill and beat-up toolbox lie on the floor behind his seat.

“What projects are you working on?” I say, seeing the curve in the road coming up ahead.

It’s a big one. I force in a deep lungful of air. Focus on exhaling.

“I’m . . . uh.” He casts a look at me. It’s clear he’s catching on to my discomfort and processing how to handle me. “I’m working on a new run for a chicken coop.”

“You have chickens?”

“Twelve.”

“Any roosters?” I swallow and grip the seat as he turns the wheel and I see my seat heading straight for the cliff ledge. Here it comes.

“One. His name’s Rocky.”

“That’s nice. How much longer do we have?”

My voice has hitched up and now sounds a little more like a chipmunk than I would’ve preferred. There’s a mixture of something—concern? humor?—in his eyes.

“Two miles,” he says calmly, as though he is completely oblivious to the panic attack his passenger is having in the next seat.

I take a breath. Two miles. I can do two miles.

What else falls into the bio for this guy?

“You don’t travel much, do you?” he says.

I let out a tense laugh. “I travel quite a bit. Just not into places bent on killing me.”

The tires slip as they climb over a particularly heavy patch of ice. The truck quakes and nearly pulls to a stop. Zaiah doubles his efforts in turning the wheel, all while working the gas pedal. As he finally pulls out of the slick patch, I add, “But no. My work is—was—based in New York.”

I flush as I fumble over my tenses.

He raises a brow. “You’re done working there entirely?”

“I’m on sabbatical.” Sabbatical. It’s a term I lean heavily on these days. Code for: lost everything in my life.

To his credit, he just nods as though this is completely believable and the girl next to him isn’t using terms reserved for those with doctorate degrees teaching biochemical engineering.

At last a simple brown sign welcomes us to Kannery National Park and, without slowing, he turns the truck. We go deeper into the forest, and after taking a number of turns I could never remember later, Zaiah pulls into a little gravel driveway.

Here we are.

In the middle of ab-so-lute-ly nowhere.

I clasp my carry-on and stare at what Uncle Terry described over the phone as my “cozy cabin.”

This is no cozy cabin. A cozy cabin is where I stayed with Serena on a group trip two Christmases ago, with a twenty-foot Fraser fir covered in more lights than the Rockefeller Christmas tree shining out of the A-frame for the world to see, smoky-gray leather couches positioned around a crackling fireplace covered in floor-to-ceiling river rocks bigger than my head, and hot tubs full of heavy mists and dripping hair and nighttime laughter that sent icicle crackles into the air.