epilogue

“OUT WITH IT, BROOKE. I’m not going to wait all day.”

Brooke sighed. This was harder than she’d thought.

“Young lady, I do not want to hear attitude from you.”

“Fine, fine,” Brooke grumbled. “Um, Nebraska.”

“Alaska!”

“Arkansas.”

“Wyoming!” Brick crowed.

“Arkansas ends in s, Daddy, remember?”

Brick clapped his hands together, then swiftly clamped them back down on the wheel of the RV.

“You’re right, of course,” he said. “That Colby-Randall education is worth every dime. See, isn’t this fun? On the journey to fix the past, we’re giving each other a present.”

He reached for his phone.

“Do not type on that thing while you’re driving,” Brooke crabbed. “Last time you did that, you almost ran over a VW Bug.”

“Punch buggy orange!” Brick crowed, smacking Brooke in the arm. “God, I’m so glad we decided to drive!”

We?

This little trip was the opposite of what Brooke had envisioned when she’d suggested going to Indiana to beg Molly for a second chance. In Brooke’s mind, they’d zip over there in a leather airplane seat, nibbling spiced nuts and drinking Champagne. Instead, Brick got a starry look in his eyes—always a harbinger of doom—and started waxing poetic about seeing America and connecting as a family. Well, first he’d made Brooke repeat the whole sordid story of the tabloid three times, delivered a stern lecture on trusting strangers, and spent ten minutes on the phone with his lawyer wondering if they could sue Trip Kendall. But once he accepted her apology as sincere and berated himself (dramatically) for not being more of a presence during Molly’s first weeks there, Brick had consumed himself with how to get her back in the most normal, non-Hollywood way possible.

The radio had broken somewhere around Barstow, so Brick had made her play every corny road-trip game he’d found on the Internet, forced her to eat Tater Tots at a Sonic Drive-In, and hopped off course in Kansas to visit the famous six-legged steer at Prairie Dog Town. Brick even insisted on reading aloud three pages of Jack Kerouac over breakfast each day, because he thought it would help him “be one with the road.” One night, they’d slept at a Holiday Inn that Brooke was pretty sure hadn’t seen housekeeping since a murder happened in its bathtub. The whole thing was horrifying. She would never feel clean again.

Even more annoyingly, Brick was constantly delighted by these horrors, as if anything located outside Beverly Hills were the most hilarious alien oddity.

“Great news, kiddo—I decided to detour us up the 29 to see the world’s largest ball of stamps!” Brick said, as if to prove her point. “Now there’s a Facebook photo for you!”

“Yeah, a lot of good that’ll do me. I still can’t get any reception on this thing,” Brooke complained, shaking her cell phone as if that would jar loose a few bars. “And the air-conditioning is jammed.”

Brick balled his hand into a fist and banged on the dashboard’s air vents. One of them cracked.

“Oops,” he said. “Gotta talk to my trainer about cutting back on the supplements.”

Brooke crossed her arms in a huff and stared out the passenger window, which was pocked with dead bugs and a thin film of dust. Brick had picked up this hideous RV on craigslist, figuring that was more authentic than buying one new and having it customized with plasma screens. “Besides,” he’d said, “if we do that, we might as well just take my Avalanche! trailer!”

He’d laughed, like this was the most ridiculous idea ever, but Brooke had seen the trailer Brick used on set. It had a hot tub, and DIRECTV. It was paradise compared to their current monstrosity, which was beige with a metallic magenta stripe on the side that made it look like a really boxy Nike shoe on wheels. Brooke refused to sleep in it, because it smelled like cigar smoke and feet (although the Hitchcockian Holiday Inn wasn’t much better), and no matter where or how she arranged her body in any of the seats, her knees hurt and her butt went numb. If this was the Great American road trip experience, Brooke saw no reason not to fly private jets for the rest of her life.

“Shouldn’t we at least find a phone that works and tell Molly we’re coming?” Brooke asked.

“No, Sunshine,” Brick said. “Surprise is our greatest weapon. We’re going to sweep her off her feet. She’s going to be thrilled!”

She’d better. Because if this tremendous act of self-sacrifice didn’t prove how sorry Brooke was, nothing would. Indiana could not arrive soon enough.

“Oops,” Brick said. “We’ve been going the wrong way on the 29 for about an hour.”

Brooke clenched her jaw. A tiny car passed them on the left. She made a fist and threw all her weight behind jamming it into Brick’s shoulder.

“Punch buggy white,” she said, her lips curling into a grin.