The Unexpected Everything

She nodded. “And a slogan with a pun in it,” she said. “So I think we’re in pretty good shape.” She leaned forward, motioning for me to give her my phone. “How are we on time?”

“We have thirty-five minutes left,” I said. I looked at the list. “We need a place where we can get a lot of little stuff, because some of them have big points value, for some reason.”

“I know where to go,” Toby said, leaning forward between the front seats. “Mr. Walker?”

“Talk to me, Toby,” he said, and she grinned.

“Take the right up there,” she said. “And step on it.”

Six pretty harrowing minutes later, my dad screeched up at the entrance to the gas station/mini-mart and swung into an open parking space with a spin of the wheel. I had a feeling it was going to be hard for him to return to regular driving after this, and not driving while pretending to be James Bond.

“Are you sure you don’t want help?” I asked, turning to look at Toby.

“No,” Toby said, hand already on the car door handle. “This one is all me.”

I nodded, even as I snuck a glance at the clock. We only had half an hour left, and we still had to make it back to the Winthrop statue, but Toby felt she had something to prove and was insisting on doing this alone.

“How long did she say she needed for this?” my dad asked a minute later, looking straight ahead through the glass doors, where we could see Toby dashing up one aisle and down another, then doubling back to the first one. While there were a few people pumping gas, there was nobody in the mini-mart except the guy behind the counter, which, judging from how crazy Toby was looking from out here, was probably a good thing.

I glanced down at the time I’d set on my phone. “She said she only needs seven minutes.” I wasn’t sure she was going to make it, since she was still running around the store and she had only three minutes left.

“I’ll take that action,” my dad said, raising his eyebrows at me.

“You think she can’t do it?” I asked, as we both watched Toby come to a standstill, apparently distracted by the magazine display.

“If she can’t, I get to pick what we watch on Sunday,” my dad said. “If she can, it’s your pick.” I looked at Toby, who was back in motion, and nodded.

“Deal.” We shook on it, and I looked back at the mini-mart, willing Toby to move faster. My dad and I had fallen into the habit of having lazy, stay-around-the-house Sundays. We usually seemed to both wind up in my dad’s study, where I’d pretend to read my textbooks and he’d pretend to read his latest historical biography while we basically just watched TV all day. Last week my dad had decided to be proactive about it, and had DVR’d a John Wayne marathon. I’d rolled my eyes, but it actually hadn’t been that bad, though I was looking forward to getting him back with a marathon of my own.

I glanced down at the countdown clock on my phone, then turned it over, knowing if I didn’t I’d just stare at it the whole time. I leaned back in my seat and looked around, suddenly realizing where we were—at the mini-mart almost on the Hartfield border. I glanced over at my dad, wondering for a second if he knew. My mom had always said it was our secret, but I was a kid then, so I’d never actually been sure.

I took a breath, then said, “Did Mom ever tell you we used to come here?”

My dad just looked at me. “Where?” he asked, sounding confused. “The gas station?”

“Not really,” I said, closing my eyes for just a second and remembering. My mom gently shaking me awake, the smile on her face as I struggled to bring her into focus. “Andie,” she’d whisper. “Want to go have an adventure?”

“It was when you were working in D.C.,” I said, the words coming slowly. I’d never talked about this to anyone before. It had been something just between my mother and me, all those magical nights where time seemed to stop, and for a little while it was like we were the only people awake in the world, like the stars were shining for us alone. “I never knew when it was going to happen. She said it was when life was getting too ordinary.”

“That sounds like her,” my dad said, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, his voice quiet.

“She’d wake me up,” I said, smiling just remembering it, how it somehow felt exciting just to be out and driving around in a car in my cupcake pajamas. “We’d drive all over in the Mustang with the top down. And we’d always end up here.”

We both sat quietly for a moment, looking into the window of the store, as Toby wandered down an aisle, stopped, consulted the list, then started moving again.

“We used to get candy and hot chocolate,” I said, remembering what it had been like to drive home, the wind whipping though my hair and my hands around the warm paper cup. “She always said that it was something you didn’t necessarily need to know about.”

“I’m glad you told me,” my dad said, his voice still quiet, a tiny hitch in the back of it somewhere. We weren’t looking at each other now; we were both looking straight ahead, and I knew that was making it easier. “She really could make anything magical, couldn’t she?”

I nodded. It was one of the things I’d taken for granted when it was just my life, but now that it was gone I could see how amazing and rare it had been. “She could,” I said, still looking ahead, feeling my throat get tight. “It’s like anything could be an adventure, even just driving around in pajamas.”