said, pulling into the parking lot of the Chautauqua Lake Rest area.
“The clue is here?” Cindy asked, wondering how that could be true.
Bree shrugged, trying not to let her face show any emotion. It was hard to be here remembering the last time with Paul.
Besides, she thought, I could be wrong about the whole thing. The clue might not be here at all. So she said nothing, just pointed the way to the bathrooms.
Afterward, Bree stayed in the lobby looking at maps and information while Cindy stepped outside to see the view. Bree joined her a few minutes later, still not saying anything.
“This is it? Really?” Cindy finally asked again. “It’s stunning, but where is the clue?”
They had been standing near a low stone wall, looking out over the view for the last twenty minutes. Not moving, not talking.
Finally, Bree turned to look at Cindy, and Cindy was happy to see that there was more color in Bree’s face, and although there were tears in her eyes, she seemed more at peace.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Bree asked.
“Stunning,” Cindy answered.
From where they were standing, they could see for miles. A large green lawn lay behind them, and Chautauqua Lake stretched out before them. The entire scene radiated peace.
Perhaps a legacy from Indian tribes who had once lived in these spaces, Cindy thought.
Still looking out over the lake, Bree sighed as if deciding what to say.
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since we took that road trip. I have so many memories of it, but mostly I remember how happy I was that we were together.
“Just us, looking at things we had never seen before. I would wish for an Internet connection when we camped or stayed at motels, but they weren’t always available then.
“It was such a short time ago, and yet everything was different. We wanted to take pictures and keep them on our computer. It sounds normal now, but then it was a new idea. There were no cell phones with their fantastic cameras.
“We’ve always been first adopters, so we bought a new-fangled camera with floppy disks. We could fit maybe five or ten pictures on each disk. I would download them off the disks and put them on my computer. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever.
“Now, we have GPS in our phones and cars, but then we didn’t. Instead, Paul and I had this small yellow plastic box from Delorme that we stuck on the car’s front window.
“There weren’t many satellites for it to see then, and sometimes it would blink out, but to us, it was magic. We had a swivel stand mounted in front of the passenger seat where we put my computer, which was attached to the yellow box with a long cord, and that’s how we saw where we were.
“Sometimes I would write as we drove. But mostly, I watched the computer screen and told Paul where we were and what road to take.
“Every time we’d pull into some public place, and I would slide out of the car, people would stare at the setup. We enjoyed making people wonder what it was. Sometimes they asked, usually they just stared.
“Because there were few satellites, sometimes we got lost anyway, but that was part of the fun. Triple-A was part of that system, and we could look at what was around us using their program. Once in a while, we’d take a detour to see something, and other times, I would read the history of the town and the areas we were passing through to Paul.
“Ever since that trip, when we saw something on a movie or TV show, we’d love to say ‘we’ve been there!’ We relived that trip repeatedly in so many ways.”
Cindy waited for Bree to say more, but instead, she walked across the lawn to the patio and took a seat. Cindy followed, not saying anything, waiting, knowing there must be more, but when Bree stayed silent, Cindy finally asked, “What prompted you to take the trip?”
“Me. I was stuck on a book I was writing, and I was probably not pleasant to be around. Paul asked what he could do, and I said I didn’t know. But I felt as if I was trapped.
“The next day, Paul told me he arranged to take the entire summer off so we could go on a road trip. He said he had accumulated vacation time. I didn’t understand how he could take all that time off, but then I didn’t understand what he did at work, so I just went with it. The idea of a road trip was so appealing I only asked how soon we could leave.
“It was the perfect solution to how I felt. I don’t know how Paul knew. He wasn’t the greatest at understanding feelings, but right then, he did. And I loved him even more for that.”
“So you traveled all over the country that summer?”
“We did,” Bree answered, smiling at the memory.
“And yet, you didn’t come to see any of us. You’d been gone for years. We didn’t know where you lived or why you left. You could have at least stopped by and said hello.”
The moments stretched out before them. Bree could imagine her past lying before them on the surface of the lake, almost within reach before it sank out of sight.
The trouble was, she thought, the past doesn’t stay out of sight. It always floats back to the surface.
“Couldn’t,” she finally answered.
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?” Cindy asked, trying not to let the hurt of feeling unwanted affect her voice. It was enough that she had cried almost every night for that first year when Bree left. That was enough crying.
“Both,” Bree said.
Turning to Cindy, she took both her hands before saying, “I wish I had enough courage to tell you then, and I wish I had it now. But I am here on this trip with you, hoping to find out the truth about myself and Paul, and maybe that will give me that courage to be the friend you deserve.”
Tears gathered in Cindy’s eyes, and she nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.
A blast of wind and rumble of thunder startled them both.
“If I were younger, I would say ‘race you to the building!’” Cindy said, laughing as the first drops of rain began to fall.
A few minutes later, Bree and Cindy joined the other travelers, who had also been out walking or looking at the view of the large Victorian building that was both incongruous and delightful as a rest stop.
While they waited out the storm, they ate snacks from the vending machine and chatted about nothing.
“It’s almost like being back in school eating out of vending machines,” Cindy said, licking the last of the salt from her bag of chips off of her fingers.
Bree nodded, “Except for all the little kids and all the old people like us, and teenagers who look as if they would rather not be here. Yep, just like then.”
Seeing the hurt on her friend’s face, she added, “Thank you for coming, Cindy. Not sure if I said that yet.”
“Truthfully, I realize I need this as much as you. Where to next? Was there a clue here?”
“I didn’t think there was until a moment ago when I remembered what Paul said while we were here. It could be nothing, and I don’t know how he could think that I would remember.
“But then, Paul knows—knew—me well. He would have known I would wait for an idea or a memory to come back, and thanks to the storm and pausing to eat, it did.”
Cindy made a hurry-up gesture with her hand, and Bree laughed.
Pointing at one of the maps mounted on the wall, she said, “We were standing in front of that map, and he pointed to a place on it and said, ‘That’s where it all began.’”