“Come on,” she said to Alex, “let’s go, too.”
He went, though he didn’t seem thrilled about it.
After fifteen minutes Morgan was breathless, but it felt good in a way. Mrs. Anderson had been nice, keeping pace with her and the others.
“Do you want to ride in the Chevy for a while?” her dad asked once they’d stopped and were drinking water.
“Nah,” she said, “I like the RV.”
“Do you kids want to play a game?” Mr. Garrison asked when they got in again. “We have a nice selection in the compartment over the table.”
DeeDee nodded eagerly. “How about Monopoly?”
Morgan thought Monopoly was lame, but Alex seemed willing to play, so they got the box out and unfolded the board.
“I always enjoyed Monotony,” Mrs. Garrison told them.
“It’s Monopoly,” DeeDee reminded her. “Not Monotony.”
Mrs. Garrison looked back, her eyes twinkling. “Really?”
Monopoly might be lame, but it was okay playing with DeeDee and Alex. They made crazy deals and called the properties names like Farpoint and DS9 and the Klingon Home World—that one had the cheapest rents because the neighbors were so loud. With the Garrisons throwing in jokes from the front seat, it was pretty fun.
* * *
THE DRIVE SEEMED painfully long to Kayla, though it was broken by various sightseeing stops her grandparents wanted to make. The biggest delay was their idea to drop down and go through the east entrance of the park in order to tour the cowboy museum in Cody, Wyoming.
It had to be making Jackson crazy with impatience. He was goal oriented: meet Alex. Get to Yellowstone. Set up camp. Do manly stuff. Become a father-and-son team.
But Kayla had news for him—it would be the little things that built a relationship with Alex, such as goofing off at a rest stop and spraying water at each other, or speculating whether ghosts ever haunted a museum instead of somebody’s creepy old house.
Luckily, her grandmother had taken a stint in the Chevy Suburban, giving Kayla a break. And in the RV it had been heartening to see the kids getting along, comfortable enough with each other’s company that all three fell asleep.
Back in the SUV it was silent part of the time, but the quiet would slowly become more uncomfortable than conversation and one of them would start talking. It worked best when they got onto books or movies and stayed away from personal subjects. To Kayla’s surprise, they had more in common that she’d expected.
They pulled into their campsite in late afternoon and quickly hit a snag.
“I brought two large tents,” Jackson explained. “One for guys, the other for the ladies.”
Alex took a step backward. “I don’t want to sleep in a tent,” he announced. “Mom, can I just throw my sleeping bag on the ground and watch the stars the way we did at Crater Lake and Yosemite?”
“Me, too,” DeeDee exclaimed.
“Same here,” Morgan added. “It’s almost time for the Pleiades meteor showers. Hey, Alex, are those the same thing as the Perseids?”
The two debated the subject as disappointment crossed Jackson’s face. Kayla barely kept from grinning. If he’d asked, she could have told him that Alex wouldn’t agree to a guys’ tent. But he’d only said he was bringing enough for everyone, and it hadn’t occurred to her that enough meant two with a gender division.
“Morgan got a D in science this year,” Jackson muttered. “How in hell did she come up with Pleiades and Perseids?”
“It’s one of life’s great mysteries. So I’ll take one tent, and you’ll take the other,” she said. “They can use them for changing clothes and storing gear.”
Jackson gave her a dark look.
“We’ll put down tarps and pitch the tents on either side to shield you from any wind,” he announced, interrupting Morgan and Alex’s debate. It had shifted from meteor showers to whether or not they’d spot wolves in the park. “But if there’s rain, you’ll need to come inside.”
As they set up the tents, Kayla insisted hers face the kids’ sleeping area, saying, “That way they won’t trip over lines or poles.”
It was mostly an excuse...she planned to leave the front open at night to keep an eye on her son and daughter. Jackson’s half smile suggested he knew what she had in mind, but she didn’t care if he thought she was being too protective. And she noticed he faced his own tent the same way.
Jackson had agreed to leave the food arrangements to Elizabeth, and soon after everything was squared away, she announced supper was ready. On the campsite picnic table was an enormous pan of roast beef hash, with a large bowl of salad and corn bread on the side.