Darkmoon(28)

He nodded absently, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. I had to keep my attention on the road, as we were just now entering the outer bands of the greater Phoenix area, and the traffic had begun to thicken. Just as I was cutting over to get on the 101 Loop so we could avoid driving through the downtown area, Connor’s phone rang.

Looking a little surprised, he pulled his cell out of his pocket, glanced at the display, then put it to his ear. “Hi, Lucas.”

I raised an eyebrow but remained silent, maneuvering through traffic as we began to climb up the overpass.

“No, we found a place online last night, but — really? That sounds great.” A pause, and then he said, “Can you text me the address? I don’t have anything to write with.” Another short silence while Lucas apparently was speaking, and Connor replied, “We will. Thanks again.” Then he ended the call and looked over at me, his expression far more cheerful than it had been a few minutes earlier.

“What did Lucas want?” I asked.

“He was calling to let us know that a golf buddy of his has a timeshare in Newport, and he said we could use it since the guy and his wife are going to Scottsdale this week instead.”

“‘Golf buddy’?” I repeated. “Since when does Lucas play golf?”

“Since…forever, I guess. Remember, you met him in the dead of winter. Not exactly golf weather in Flagstaff.”

“True.” I couldn’t help chuckling a little. “I guess I just can’t get used to how…mainstream…so many of you Wilcoxes are.”

“Yeah, we’re not a bunch of hippies like the McAllisters,” he agreed, but I could tell from the quirk at the corner of his mouth that he was teasing me. “But yeah, Lucas fits in with that crowd pretty well. As far as I can tell, they’re a bunch of rich guys who play a lot of golf and don’t seem to do much else. I have no idea where they get their money.”

“I’m sure they probably think the same thing about Lucas.”

“Probably.”

After that we slipped into a companionable silence as we pushed on through the Valley sprawl, driving through all those bedroom communities of Phoenix: Peoria, Glendale, Avondale, Goodyear. We stopped in Goodyear and grabbed some burgers at the In-N-Out just off the freeway, since there probably wouldn’t be much else until we hit Quartszite, a few miles from the border. After that we got back on Interstate 10 and began to head out into the vast, desolate desert that stretched between Phoenix and L.A.

It was certainly the farthest I’d ever driven in my life, and I had to force myself to keep my attention on the road rather than keep looking around me. Not that this particular stretch of desert had that much to recommend it, although some late wildflowers were still clinging to their blooms at the side of the road.

“Just let me know when you want to switch places,” Connor said, breaking the silence somewhere outside a wide spot on the road called Tonopah.

“How about in Blythe?” I’d looked up our route online the night before, just to familiarize myself with the waypoints. I knew Blythe was right at the Arizona/California border, and it seemed as good a place as any.

“Sounds good,” he replied, adjusting his seat slightly so he could lean back a little more. He didn’t exactly close his eyes and go to sleep, but I could tell he wasn’t in a chatty mood. Just as well; I adjusted the volume on the stereo, glad that I’d decided to pay a little extra for satellite radio, and let the Foo Fighters serenade us across the desert.

Even though I’d glanced at Google maps so I’d know where I was going, they didn’t give much of a sense of scale. I felt as if we were driving forever, unending mile after unending mile flashing past as I let our speed drift up past eighty. No big deal, as the speed limit was seventy-five, but even so I felt as if we were standing still. Finally, though, we reached Blythe, made a pit stop at a fast food place there, and got some iced teas to perk us up. We switched places after we filled up the Cherokee, Connor getting into the driver’s seat as I gladly reclined in the passenger seat. Four hours of driving was enough for me.

But if the Arizona desert had seemed interminable, it was even worse on the California side. It seemed to stretch out forever, and oddly, the landscape was far more desolate, a real wasteland. At least in Arizona there had been wild grass and cactus and scattered wildflowers. Here I saw only widely spaced scrubby bushes, and in some places not even that. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought we were driving across the surface of the moon.

At last, though, we hit Indio, then Palm Springs, and after that we began to drop down into Southern California’s immense suburban sprawl. I thought I’d gotten a sense for what that was like in Phoenix, but this was far more than that, mile after mile of houses and industrial parks and big-box stores and chain restaurants. I turned and looked at Connor, wide-eyed.