Untethered by Julie Lawson Timmer Read Free Book Online

five? It’s preposterous!”
    But the bowls continued to appear in unequal stacks, and Bradley continued to rant about it, and to redistribute them. And his wife continued to pull him to the bedroom every time she caughthim doing it. “I used to think Allie was stacking the bowls the wrong way on purpose, to mess with my head,” Bradley told Char after one such session in bed. “Now I’m beginning to suspect it’s someone else in the house who’s sabotaging the china, and for a very different reason.”
    Char felt the corners of her eyes burn, and she turned quickly away from Allie, raising a tissue to her face with the pretense she was about to sneeze. She wiped her wet eyes and took a moment to compose herself. When she turned back, she found Allie looking at Will and shaking her head, a thumb pointing behind her, toward Char. Will’s hands were raised chest high, his shoulders lifted.
    â€œWhat?” Char asked, looking at each of them in turn. “I thought I was going to sneeze, that’s all.” Will shook his head and went back to the boxes and Allie said, “Whatever,” and stepped to the bookshelves.
    Walking her fingers over the spines of one row, Allie said, “The books he used to read to me are all in my room. Those are the ones I want to keep. They’re the ones with all the memories. Although . . .” She scanned the shelves. “Where is it? Could he have . . . Oh! There it is!”
    She stepped to her right, in front of the “General Reference” section, bent, and pulled something out. Turning to Char, she held it up victoriously. It was an old road atlas. “I was starting to wonder if he’d gotten rid of it.”
    â€œNever!” Char said. “It was like a Bible to him. Or a diary. Or—”
    â€œAll of those things,” Allie said. She flipped through the atlas, stopping now and then at a page and tracing her index finger over something. Quietly she said, “We took a lot of trips.”
    Without seeing the pages, Char knew what Allie was tracing:Bradley’s handwriting. He had bought the atlas before Allie was a week old, he told Char. He was so eager to take his daughter road tripping and camping throughout Michigan and the Midwest. Lindy would have no part of roughing it, so it was a daddy-daughter thing from the start.
    Bradley carted the atlas with them on every trip, marking their route with a red pen, noting the places he planned to stop, circling the locations they had loved the most, and writing notes about their stay.
    â€œGreat burgers here!”
    â€œCall ahead to reserve lakeside campsite—place fills quickly.”
    â€œCool campsite, but bring more bug spray next time. Mosquitoes 100 / Allie + Dad 0.”
    â€œYou’re such a dork, Dad,” Allie said every time she saw him making a new annotation in the atlas. But any time he had the book out, she flipped through the pages and reread all the notes he had made over the years.
    Char had been prepared to let them continue their daddy-daughter tradition on their own, but when Allie found out her stepmom liked camping, the girl insisted she be included in their annual treks. Soon they were making a few trips each summer, and each time Bradley produced the atlas and his red pen at the end of the day, Char joined her stepdaughter in teasing him about it.
    â€œWe had some very good times on those trips,” Char said.
    â€œYeah,” Allie said. “We did.” She turned a few more pages and studied them before lifting her face to Char. “I know I was a holy terror for a while there. But for some reason, I never let that bleed over into camping trips.”
    â€œThat’s probably why they’re some of my favorite memories,” Char said, winking.
    Allie closed the book. “You know, CC, I’m not sure I’ve ever really apologized to you for that year—”
    Char raised