A Road Trip's Turn

The asphalt shimmered, a mirage of heat dancing on the horizon. Dust, fine and ochre, coated everything – the dashboard, the worn leather of the car seats, the very air we breathed. It was the summer of ’91, and the long, winding roads of the Deep South were stretching us thin, both literally and figuratively. Katrina Marie, my daughter, a wisp of a girl with eyes that usually sparkled like captured sunlight, was wilting beside me. Her small face was smudged with the day’s grime, her lower lip beginning to tremble.

“Mommy,” she whispered, her voice raspy, “I’m so hungry.”

I glanced at her, my heart aching. The roadside offerings had been sparse, mostly gas stations that smelled of stale coffee and disappointment. We’d been driving for hours, the landscape a monotonous blur of sun-bleached fields and skeletal trees. West Virginia felt impossibly far.