They Left Me Behind on the Road Trip, So I Got on a Better Ride novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Tailgate

I read the email out loud in Dot's hospital room.

When I got to the part about the founder's family, Sawyer stood up out of his corner chair so fast it scraped the floor.

Dot just lay there under her red hat with her eyes closed.

"He's clever," she said. "I'll give him that. He's a nasty little boy, but he's clever."

"Can you do anything?" Shay asked from the doorway.

Dot opened one eye and looked at her.

"You must be the plate thrower."

Shay went pink. "Frankie told you?"

"Frankie tells me everything. It's in her contract." Dot closed the eye again. "And no. I recused myself. If I lift one finger now, he wins. He's built it so that anyone who helps her proves his point."

Sawyer was already pacing.

"It's defamation," he said. "It's a false complaint filed in bad faith. I can have a letter to the board by tonight. I can have a letter to his parents by tomorrow."

"No," I said.

He stopped pacing.

"Frankie, this is literally my job."

"You're the foundation's lawyer. And I'm the girl who's supposedly involved with the founder's family." I folded my arms. "If you write that letter, you're the proof."

"Then I'll recuse myself too."

"Then you're still the guy who recused himself because of me." I shook my head. "I answer it. On the fourteenth. In the room. That was always the plan."

He looked at me like I was a contract with a clause he hadn't seen before.

"You're very stubborn," he said.

"She's right," said Dot from the bed. "Now go away, all three of you. I'm tired of being looked at."

They let her out the next afternoon with a bag of pills and orders to lie flat in a motel room for two days.

She lay flat for exactly four hours.

Then she sat up against the headboard and pointed at the three of us.

"Go eat something that isn't from a vending machine. I want to be alone with the television."

Shay borrowed her aunt's pickup truck, and we found a taco truck in a parking lot by the river with a line around the block.

Sawyer stood in front of the menu board for a full minute.

"What's al pastor?"

"Pork," Shay said. "With pineapple."

"Pineapple," he repeated, like it was a crime.

"Just order it," I said. "Trust me."

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