The Unexpected Everything

“There was a note for me in the car,” I said, and my dad looked at me, suddenly going very still. “From Mom. She told me to take care of you.” I felt like I’d already spent far too much of this morning crying, but nevertheless, tears were starting to flood my eyes.

My dad smiled, his chin trembling just the smallest bit. “You do, sweetheart,” he said, and I started to cry for real as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into a hug. “Of course you do.”

“Uh . . . Alex?” We turned around to see Peter coming down the steps of the bus, his frown deepening when he saw me. “Hey, Andie. When did you get here?” He didn’t wait for me to reply, just turned to my dad and said, “They’re ready for you.”

My dad looked at me and then nodded. “All right.”

“Wait,” I said, stepping into Peter’s path, like that would somehow stop this from happening. “You’re still going through with it?”

My dad gave me a smile. “It’ll be okay,” he said, and nodded toward the stage. “Want to come watch?”

I shook my head. I’d come all this way—I’d done this instead of talking to Clark when I still might have been able to—and my dad was going to go ahead and do this. “No,” I said, taking a step away. I wasn’t sure I could stand to see my dad get humiliated, especially when I’d come so far to try to stop it. “I have to . . . go to New Jersey.”

“Oh,” my dad said, eyebrows flying up. “Why?”

“Alex,” Peter said, gesturing toward the stage, speaking in his I mean business voice. “We’re on a schedule.”

“I’ll see you at home,” I said, giving my dad a nod. “Um. Good luck.” I turned around then and started walking back to the car, wondering why I’d even tried if it had made absolutely no difference.

I got turned around in the parking lot, the heat coming off the baking asphalt messing with my sense of direction as I turned down one wrong row after another. Finally, Palmer dropped a pin at her location, and I was able to track her down. I’d heard the sound system come on during my third wrong turn, though I was too far away to hear anything specific, which I was glad about. I didn’t need to hear the governor of New York making a fool of my dad, especially when I hadn’t been able to stop it from happening.

“Bad news,” Palmer said, hopping off the trunk when she saw me coming.

“Me too,” I said, nodding to her. “You go first.”

“So Fitz says the car overheated,” she says. “He thinks we probably need to tow it, or at the very least, add coolant if we have it—”

“Which we don’t.”

“Or water to the engine, but only after we’ve let the car cool down.”

I felt my stomach sink. “How long is that going to take?”

Palmer winced. “He said to give it a couple of hours.”

“But—”

“I know,” she said, shaking her head. “What happened with your dad?”

“Nothing good,” I said with a sigh, wondering how it was possible to feel this exhausted when it was just a little after noon. “He didn’t listen to me and just—” I stopped when I heard my phone ringing in my bag. I pulled it out and saw it was my dad calling. “Hello?” I asked, utterly confused, wondering if it was Peter or someone calling from his phone. Because I was pretty sure my dad was still onstage at the moment.

“Hey,” my dad said, causing me to look over toward the stage, as though I could see anything there except faint dots.

“What—” I started. “How are you—”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he said. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the parking lot with Palmer,” I said. “Oh—Palmer’s here. And the car overheated, and I really need to get to New Jersey. . . .” I trailed off, still trying to grasp what was happening. “I still don’t understand what’s going on.”

“So you need a ride,” my dad said, and I could practically hear the smile in his voice. “Want to use mine?”

? ? ?

“So this is a campaign bus,” Palmer said, from her seat by the row that surrounded a table, where strategy sessions usually took place. She ran her hand over the tabletop and nodded her approval. “I like it.”

“Explain it to me again,” I said, leaning more into the aisle. My dad was sitting across from me, in the aisle seat as well. He and Walt had picked us up in the TOWARD THE FUTURE bus, and my dad had called AAA to tow my car back to Stanwich. Peter was not on the bus, and I was pretty sure my dad had left him back at the fairgrounds, which Walt seemed particularly happy about.

My dad smiled and shook his head. “I told you, you should have stayed to hear it.”

“So . . . you didn’t let the governor say anything,” I said, now really regretting that I hadn’t stayed, if only to see the look on Peter’s face when things started going off script. “You just started talking?”

“I said I had an announcement,” my dad said. “And one that couldn’t wait.”

“People are talking about it online,” Palmer said, scrolling through her phone, and my dad let out a short laugh.