The Road to Nowhere
The Bronco's odometer read one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles, and Jake was fairly sure at least half of them had been driven by their father. The old truck still smelled like him if you breathed in deep enough near the seats—engine grease and spearmint gum and something underneath that Jake couldn't name, something that made his chest tighten every time he caught it. He kept both hands at ten and two, the way Dad taught him, knuckles pale against the cracked steering wheel, and watched the road unspool ahead like a gray ribbon through the pines.
"You're doing it again," Ethan said from the passenger seat, one boot propped against the dash despite Jake having told him twice already to knock it off.
"Doing what."
"That thing where you grip the wheel like it's trying to get away from you." Ethan reached forward and spun the radio dial, chasing a station through a wash of static. "Relax. We're not gonna crash."
"We might if you keep messing with that instead of watching the map."
"There's no map. There's a phone with no signal and a prayer." Ethan grinned at him, that same reckless grin he'd worn since he was eight years old and jumping off the Miller's Creek bridge to…
