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too far ahead! We’re—”
    The sign popped into view. “Ah,” she said. The seven settled into place at exactly the same instant, so precisely that she almost heard it click.
    “Whew!” she said. She sank back in her seat. “That was too close for comfort.”
    “They do set all our gauges at the factory, you know,” Ira said.
    “Sure, years and years ago,” she told him. “I’m exhausted.”
    Ira said, “I wonder how long we should keep to Route One?”
    “I feel I’ve been wrung through a wringer,” Maggie said.
    She made little plucking motions at the front of her dress.
    Now collections of parked trucks and RVs appeared in clearings at random intervals—no humans around, no visible explanation for anybody’s stopping there. Maggie had noticed this on her earlier trips and never understood it. Were the drivers off fishing, or hunting, or what? Did country people have some kind of secret life?
    “Another thing is their banks,” she told Ira. “All these towns have banks that look like itty-bitty brick houses, have you noticed? With yards around them, and flower beds. Would you put your faith in such a bank?”
    “No reason not to.”
    “I just wouldn’t feel my money was secure.”
    “Your vast wealth,” Ira teased her.
    “I mean it doesn’t seem professional.”
    “Now, according to the map,” he said, “we could stay on Route One a good deal farther up than Oxford. Serena had us cutting off at Oxford, if I heard you right, but … Check it for me, will you?”
    Maggie took the map from the seat between them and opened it, one square at a time. She was hoping not to have to spread it out completely. Ira would get after her for refolding it wrong. “Oxford,” she said. “Is that in Maryland or Pennsylvania?”
    “It’s in Pennsylvania, Maggie. Where Highway Ten leads off to the north.”
    “Well, then! I distinctly remember she told us to take Highway Ten.”
    “Yes, but if we … Have you been listening to a word I say? If we stayed on Route One, see, we could make better time, and I think there’s a cutoff further up that would bring us directly to Deer Lick.”
    “Well, she must have had a reason, Ira, for telling us Highway Ten.”
    “A reason? Serena? Serena Gill have a reason?”
    She shook out the map with a crackle. He always talked like that about her girlfriends. He acted downright jealous of them. She suspected he thought women got together on the sly and gossiped about their husbands. Typical: He was so self-centered. Although sometimes it did happen, of course.
    “Did that service station have a snack machine?” she asked him.
    “Just candy bars. Stuff you don’t like.”
    “I’m dying of hunger.”
    “I could have got you a candy bar, but I thought you wouldn’t eat it.”
    “Didn’t they have potato chips or anything? I’m starving.”
    “Baby Ruths, Fifth Avenues …”
    She made a face and went back to the map.
    “Well, I would say take Highway Ten,” she told him.
    “I could swear I saw a later cutoff.”
    “Not really,” she said.
    “Not really? What does that mean? Either there’s a cutoff or there isn’t.”
    “Well,” she said, “to tell the truth, I haven’t quite located Deer Lick yet.”
    He flicked on his turn signal. “We’ll find you someplace to eat and I’ll take another look at the map,” he said.
    “Eat? I don’t want to eat!”
    “You just said you were starving to death.”
    “Yes, but I’m on a diet! All I want is a snack!”
    “Fine. We’ll get you a snack, then,” he said.
    “Really, Ira, I hate how you always try to undermine my diets.”
    “Then order a cup of coffee or something. I need to look at the map.”
    He was driving down a paved road that was lined with identical new ranch houses, each with a metal toolshed out back in the shape of a tiny red barn trimmed in white. Maggie wouldn’t have thought there’d be any place to eat in such a neighborhood, but sure enough, around the next bend they