Read Along for the Ride for Free Online Page A

said.
    She nodded, like we’d made a deal, then looked back at Thisbe. ‘Thanks for the food,’ she said. ‘I really… I appreciate it.’
    ‘No problem,’ I told her. But she was still looking at the baby, her face weary, so I took this as a dismissal and left, shutting the door behind me.
    Downstairs, my dad was finishing his dinner, perusing the sports section. When I slid into a chair opposite him, he looked up at me and smiled. ‘So how’s she doing? Baby asleep?’
    ‘Not really,’ I told him, unwrapping my burger. ‘She’s still screaming.’
    ‘Yikes.’ He pushed his chair back, standing up. ‘I better go check in.’
    Finally, I thought as he disappeared up the stairs. I picked up my burger, taking a bite: it was cold, but still good. I’d only eaten about half of it when he reappeared, walking to the fridge and grabbing a beer. I sat there, chewing, as he popped the top, took a sip, and looked out at the water.
    ‘Everything okay up there?’
    ‘Oh, sure,’ he said easily, moving the bottle to his other hand. ‘She’s just colicky, like Hollis was. Not much you can do except wait it out.’
    The thing was, I loved my dad. He might have been a little moody, and definitely more than a little selfish, but he’d always been good to me, and I admired him. Right at that moment, though, I could see why someone might not like him that much. ‘Does Heidi… is her mom coming to help out, or anything?’
    ‘Her mom died a couple of years ago,’ he said, taking another sip of his beer. ‘She has a brother, but he’s older, lives in Cincinnati with kids of his own.’
    ‘What about a nanny or something?’
    Now he looked at me. ‘She doesn’t want help,’ he said. ‘It’s like I told you, she wants to do this on her own.’
    I had a flash of Heidi craning her neck, looking down at my dad’s office, the grateful look on her face when I brought her dinner. ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘you should, you know, insist, though. She seems pretty tired.’
    He just looked at me for a moment, a flat expression on his face. ‘Auden,’ he said finally, ‘this isn’t something you need to worry about, all right? Heidi and I will work it out.’
    In other words, back off. And he was right. This was his house, I was a guest here. It was presumptuous to show up and just assume I knew better, based on only a few hours. ‘Right,’ I said, balling up my napkin. ‘Of course.’
    ‘All right,’ he said, his voice relaxed again. ‘So… I’m going to head upstairs, get back to it. I’d like to finish this chapter tonight. You’ll be okay on your own?’
    It wasn’t even really a question, only phrased to sound like one. Funny how intonation could do so much, change even what something was at its core. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Go ahead. I’ll be fine.’

      Chapter

          THREE
    I wasn’t fine, though. I was bored, and Thisbe was still hollering. I unpacked my clothes, tried to crack my future Econ 101 textbook, and cleaned out all the messages on my phone. All of which took about forty minutes. At that point, with the baby still crying – still crying! – I finally grabbed a jacket, pulled my hair back, and went out for a walk.
    At first, I wasn’t planning to go to the Tip, whatever or wherever it was. I just wanted some air, a break from the noise, and a chance to process whatever it was that had happened between my dad and me earlier that evening. But after I walked in the opposite direction from the boardwalk for about a block, the sidewalk ended in a culde-sac, a bunch of parked cars crowded along the edges. A path was visible off to one side, and I could see light in the distance. Probably a mistake, I thought, but then I thought of Hollis in that picture frame, and followed it anyway.
    It wound through some beach grass and over a couple of dunes, then opened up to a wide swath of sand. From the look of it, it had once been all beach, until erosion or a storm or both created a