“Does Richard know who Marco is?” I ask Mom.
Now that Richard has decided to rise from the dead, I’m starting to question how realistic our plan is. Theoretically, anyone who knows about Mom’s past with Marco could eventually place “with Marco” on the list of our possible whereabouts.
“No,” she says. “Or. Maybe. I don’t know?”
“Which is it?!”
“I don’t knooww-ah. Jesus!” As if Richard’s ominous text weren’t enough, there’s also a big-ass Amazon Prime truck going approximately two miles per hour in front of us. “What is this bitch doing in the left lane? MOVE.” Her hair almost slaps me in the face as she checks her blind spot and jerks the car into the right lane to pass. “I was with Richard for two years, so yeah. I’ve probably mentioned Marco. It’s not like I told him his life story.” She shoots me a look. “Calm down. He wouldn’t know where Marco lives.”
I look at Richard’s message again to determine exactly how worried we should be. I guess I should be relieved that he didn’t send a frantic all-caps accusation. But then again, the fact that he didn’t send a frantic all-caps accusation is also kind of weird. Who the hell in his current position would be so calm?
“What does this text even mean?” I ask. “You wouldn’t happen to know…? Is it a genuine question? Is he accusing you? Is he, like, assuming that you wouldn’t know anything but asking just for good measure?” Bzzz. “He’s texting again!”
“What now?” she asks.
RICHARD: http://njnews.com/short-hills-house-fire
“It’s a link…” I click and recognize the page from my internet-combing session earlier. “… to one of the news stories.”
“That’s it?” she asks. “A link? No words?”
“No words.”
“Good. That’s good.” She breathes. “Right? He thinks we don’t even know about it. Otherwise why else would he send a link?”
“Unless he knows and he’s taunting us.”
“You think it’s a threat?”
“I mean, I don’t know.”
“Oh, my God, it’s a threat!”
“No. No. Let’s look at the texts again.” I read the first one aloud. “I think you’re right. He was probably just like, ‘I’m gonna ask Gia if she knows anything about my house burning down.’ Then he sent it and thought, ‘Oh. Maybe she hasn’t heard the news yet. I’ll send her a link to fill her in.’ He’s probably sending those same two texts to literally everyone he knows in Jersey.”
“This is some shit.” Mom lets out a tiny laugh. “He leaves me, I burn his house down, and I’m still over here trying to decode his short-ass texts.”
“At least he’s not hurling insults at you like Luke did to me,” I say. “And to think that was before we destroyed his car.”
She lets out an even tinier laugh. “What does the link say?”
“I already read it,” I tell her. “Same as the other ones. Sounds like they still don’t have any leads.” I take my phone out to do another news scan. “That picture of the fire still only has like forty retweets. Honestly? I think we should just ignore Richard for now. We gotta call Marco.”
Mom indicates her agreement with a shrug and we spend the next few minutes brainstorming the story we’re gonna tell him. The mutual consensus is that less is more. As long as we get his address and an invite, we can figure out the rest of our story later on.
“I’ll do the talking,” Mom says. “You just make sure you have your phone out. I’ll ask him his address so you can type it into Google Maps.”
“Wouldn’t that be traceable?”
It’s getting exhausting worrying about every little thing we do with our phones that could possibly be used as evidence against us, but it’s second nature at this point. I can’t tell if we’re being way too cautious or not nearly cautious enough, but I feel like anything GPS-related calls for us to err on the side of paranoia.
“Open the glove compartment,” Mom says without missing a beat. “I think Ma has a Garmin in there.”
“A what?”
“It’s like an old-school electronic thing that does GPS navigation only,” Mom says. “From like, before you could do it on your phone.”
“Wait. Really? Amazing.” I find the ancient device amid a nest of half-stuffed envelopes and used air fresheners. I pull it out of its tiny neoprene case. Good thing we took Nonna’s car. “I got it.”
Please work, I think as I jam my thumb into the On button. Please give us accurate directions. Please don’t let Marco be lying when he says he misses Mom. Please let him have literally no plans all week. Please make all our problems go away.
Wait.
Shut up, Joey.
It’s a Garmin, not the magic fucking lamp from Aladdin.
Mom turns the music off and I hear a faint ring come from inside her phone. She must have called Marco at some point while I was busy berating myself.
“Hiii, Marco.” Does her voice sound suspect? Oh, my God. Her voice sounds suspect. It’s all wobbly and fake-nice. “Yeah. I know, I know. Right? I’m goo — well — I’m not good. Joey and I are in a little bit of trouble…”
“What are yo —” I start to whisper before she sticks her shiny hot-pink nails in my face.
“Trouble was a strong word. Joey just broke up with his boyfriend.” Boyfriend? I’m guessing Marco just asked. “We’re in New York. Going upstate. It’s spring break, so I wanted to take him on a vacation to get his mind off things.” Pause. “I think we’re close to where you live.” Marco’s deep voice faintly echoes from the phone, but it’s mostly drowned out by the wind whipping through the ash crack in Mom’s window. “Really? We’d love to stop by.” Pause. “Yeah, I know.” Pause. Awkward chuckle. “That’s fine. Joey — get this down.”
Finally! Something is going right for us. Marco’s gonna take us in and save the day. Everything is going to be okay. It will be like we never burned down a house at all. Better, even, because otherwise we wouldn’t have our amazing new lakeside lives to look forward to.
My new best friend Garmin tells me we’re just two hours away. But I’m sure we can make it in an hour forty-five if Mom speeds a little bit.