"I'm just outside of Omaha," Nick told Officer Mead later that afternoon. He was standing by a payphone in the parking lot of the gas station where they'd stopped to fill up. Amanda and Bree were getting travel supplies. Nick wrapped the phone cord around himself and leaned against the wall of the booth.
"You do realize I'm required by law to tell the officers looking for you where you're located, correct?" Officer Mead asked, sighing.
"I know," Nick replied. "I apologize for being vague, but I hope you understand I just can't risk my neck giving you an exact location..." he noticed Bree and Amanda at the register inside. "She'll be home in five days," he added, and before Officer Mead could say much more, he hung up the phone. And only just in time, too. Amanda and Bree came out less than 10 seconds after the phone hit the receiver. He turned, smiling to them. "Good stuff?"
"Cookie Dough Pop Tarts," Bree replied.
Amanda put a cup of coffee into Nick's hand. "Now you're talking," Nick said, taking a large mouthful of the coffee.
"I tried to tell her," Amanda laughed, "Caffeine trumps cookie dough, but she wouldn't listen."
"I wouldn't say trumps," Nick answered, holding out a hand for the foil wrapped toaster pasteries Bree was unwrapping. She plopped one into his hand. He grinned. "They kinda go hand-in-hand."
"Double fisting sugar rushes," Amanda said, rolling her eyes, "Oh the joy the rest of this road trip is gonna be." She poked Nick's pudgy stomach and made her way to the car's drivers seat.
"Sugar is a food group," Nick argued as he folded himself into the backseat of the car.
"WannaPlayISpyWeShouldPlayISpyIGottaGoodOneYourNeverGonnaGuessItGOOO!"
"Nick we're not playing I Spy."
"ISpySomethingYellow."
"Nick, we're not playing I Spy."
"ISpyTheDeadCornStalksCosTheresSoFuckingMuchOfIt!"
Amanda sighed as Bree laughed from the passanger seat. "No more coffee or pop tarts for you," Amanda said, glancing at Nick in the rearview mirror. He was leaning forward from the back seat, his long arms flopped over the head rests of their seats, bouncing with hyperactivity. Even though she was acting annoyed, Amanda couldn't help but harbor the secret opinion that it was kind of a little adorable that he was acting like this. And he was right, she had to admit, there was a lot of yellowed stalks lining the roads.
Bree looked over at Amanda, who was trying to suppress a smile and failing miserably. "Was he like this the first time?" she asked.
"Not all the time," Amanda said. "Sometimes though him and Brian would get going and it was like travelling with a couple five year olds. I felt more like a mother than anything else."
"ThatWasSoBriansFaultNotMine," came Nick's voice from the back. He'd leaned back from their seats and was laying sprawled across his back seat, his legs bent in weird positions to make it so his torso could lie flat.
Bree smiled. "Baylee used to get like that sometimes. He'd get so hyper and show off at school and get in trouble and I remember Mom would be like you're just like your father at him. Once he tried to go down the slide at the playground on a skateboard and he broke his elbow and all he had to say for it was how cool it was that he almost made it."
"Brian wouldda so done that..." came Nick's weigh in from the back. His eyes were closed. He yawned.
Amanda raised an eyebrow and mouthed falling asleep? to Bree, who nodded. Thank God, Amanda added. Bree giggled.
"I hope you don't mind my joining you, by the way," Amanda said, glancing at Bree. "I don't want to intrude on your time with Nick, I just..." she sighed, unsure how to word what she was feeling.
"I'm glad you came," Bree said. "And I think my dad would've been glad, too."
Amanda smiled, her heart warmed by Bree's words. "Why's that?" she asked.
"Because you make Nick happy," Bree replied. "He was talking about you, you know, before you came. Not a lot, I could tell it bothered him to say too much, but he did talk about you. He'd get this look in his eyes, like he was really sad."
Amanda shifted her hands on the steering wheel and stared forward. Hearing Nick say he missed her and had thought of her was one thing, but hearing someone else confirm it made it all the more true. She watched the road, blinking to keep from crying. She felt like she'd already done enough crying on this trip to last her a couple lifetimes and she knew she was no where near done with the tears. It was the nature of the beast, she supposed.
"Sometimes," Bree said, "I wish that Nick was secretly my dad and that I'd find that out and it would make everything better." She stared at her hands. "Sometimes I wish I was adopted and I could go find my dad somewhere..." She looked up at Amanda, "Isn't that awful?"
"It's normal," Amanda replied. "I used to wish that, too. That I was adopted or that John Goodman was my dad."
"John Goodman?"
"Yeah. Like from Roseanne."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Bree considered this for a moment. "Why John Goodman?"
"He just seemed like a good dad," Amanda laughed, "I don't know why. He always plays dads, and he has that comforting kind of voice. I would love for my father to hug me and say that it's gonna be okay in a voice like John Goodman's got."
"Is your dad... gone, too?" Bree asked, careful about her wording.
Amanda sighed. "He's ---" she couldn't think of a way to word it. She shook her head, "He's alive, but he doesn't really care about me. My brother died a long time ago and he kind of stopped caring for me after that. I worked at the magazine he owned - Pop Stuff - and that's how I met Nick. Trying to impress my father and get the scoop, I lied to Nick and to Brian and was submitting news stories behind their backs to my dad."
"He mentioned that a little," Bree admitted.
"You know the stupid thing?" Amanda asked, glancing at Bree again. "He was never more proud of me than when I was being my most deceptive. But your dad, he was proud when I walked away."
Bree mulled over the words for a long time. "You're brave."
"Not really. My father drove me away in the end, I left out of neccessity. I just realized that I couldn't betray people who really did care about me to jockey for my father's affection."
"I'm sorry you have such a crappy dad," Bree said.
"I'm sorry you never got to meet yours," Amanda replied.
They rode along in silence for a few moments, both staring ahead into the stretch of road before them that wound through the weathered stalks and into the distance. Bree was thinking about her mother and mentally comparing her to what Amanda had said about her father. She suddenly realized that the desire for affection had been a massive part of her disconnect with Leighanne. Maybe, she realized, after losing Brian, Leighanne just lost the capacity to show affection. She did with Baylee, though, Bree thought bitterly. Except even that wasn't entirely true. Bree suddenly recalled Baylee telling her once that Leighanne had been a much better person before Brian died, that the loss had broken her spirit, that she was a hollowed out version of the person she'd once been.
Bree wondered whether it was possible that when somebody dies, they take a part of you with them, and maybe that part that Brian took of her family had been a lot bigger than any of them realized.
"Has Nick told you about the entire trip?" Amanda asked, breaking into Bree's thoughts.
"He's being kind of secretive about it," Bree said.
"He was when we went, too," Amanda laughed.
"The only thing I know for sure is that we're going to see my grandparents in Kentucky."
Amanda smiled, "You must be excited about that."
"I'm scared to death," Bree answered. "I've never met them before."
Amanda's jaw fell slack, "What?"
"Not since I remember anyways," Bree said.
"They live on this crazy big farm," Amanda said, "And your grandmother cooks these amazing meals. There's a gorgeous field of sunflowers outback. And horses. They have ducks, too." She grinned remembering all the beauty and fun they'd had during their stop at the Littrell house on their first trip, and the thunder storm that she and Nick had gotten caught in the barn during. Brian had seemed so at home, so in his element... "You're gonna feel so close to your dad there," Amanda added, musing outloud.
Bree smiled, "Yeah?"
"They still had his bedroom when I was there, from when he was a kid. They had it exactly like it was. All these baseball and basket ball trophies from high school and his graduation cap and all kinds of pictures and stuff that he had back then. He said it was like it never changed, he could've walked in the door after a day at school and it would've looked the same as it did so many years later."
Bree tried to imagine the room. She couldn't. "My dad played sports?" Bree asked.
"He was very athletic."
"I'm not at all," Bree admitted.
"I guess your dad had a baseball scholarship he could've taken to go to college with if he hadn't joined the Backstreet Boys," Amanda said. She laughed, "He made the right choice."
"It's weird," Bree said, "That he was famous, you know?"
"I bet."
"Like people still recognize my mom and Baylee on the street, it's really strange when like a forty year old woman comes running over to give Baylee a hug and tell him she was a big fan of my dad and ask who I am. It's so awkward. They always give me these looks and then start telling me about how my dad signed their t-shirts or how his music changed their life. One girl spent like an hour recalling stories from some cruise she went on with them and the whole time all I could think about was that this random stranger knew my dad better than I do."
Amanda had never really thought about Bree's interaction with fans before, or how strange that must be. Looking as much like Brian as Brianna did, though, she could easily understand how she would be recognized as his daughter. Anyone that knew the Littrell jaw structure or nose even slightly knew that it was a very distinctive couple of features to be paired together, and lucky Bree got them both.
"Baylee's better at answering them," Bree added.
"Baylee was always a ham like your father," Amanda nodded.
Bree thought about Baylee and the text messages they'd been exchanging. She wondered if she should tell Amanda about Leighanne having reported her missing - maybe Amanda would know what to do so that Nick wouldn't bring her right home immediately, so they could finish out the trip. She really didn't want Nick to freak out.
Amanda leaned forward in her seat as they passed a street sign. "Welcome to Omaha," she read aloud. She grinned, "We should probably wake sleeping beauty up. He's gonna want to be awake when we get there."
Bree turned in her seat, allowing the thoughts about Leighanne fly out of her head, and looked at the backseat. "Nick," she called, "Wake up, we're in Omaha." When he didn't react, she poked his stomach, "Nii-iiick," she called again.
"I could really go for a blueberry muffin right now," Nick mused, still mostly asleep, his words running together like a blur as he stirred.
"Even after that colossal sugar rush and crash," Amanda said, shaking his head, "And the boy wakes up talking about more sugar."
