After we gas up and I use the restroom, I find Aisha standing by the soft-serve ice cream station. She points to the sign. Fifty cents a cone.

“On me,” I say, figuring we can afford a buck for ice cream. “This way, you can never say I was a cheap bastard.”

Aisha isn’t listening, though. She seems to be scanning the cavernous convenience store, and she looks — angry? Sometimes it’s hard to tell with her.

I pay for the ice cream and gas, and we are down to sixty-five dollars. I’m not sure why I’m not more worried about it. I’m just not.

We drive off, and on our right is the Great Salt Lake. It’s as big as an ocean, and the shore is crusty white. I don’t know much about salt lakes, or what makes one lake saltier than others, but it is cool to look at.

Aisha’s quiet, so I say, “Whatcha thinkin’ ’bout?”

She tightens her lips. “Forget about it.”

A pang in my stomach. What happened? Did I do something again? “No, tell me.”

She glances over at me, and I see in her eyes that she’s not mad. She’s sad. “Do you know the last time I saw a person who wasn’t white-skinned?”

I laugh, because that wasn’t what I expected her to say. But then I think back. Wyoming? No, definitely not. Here in Utah? I scan my brain. No. Not that I can remember.

“Jesus,” I say.

“I don’t think about that stuff a lot, but I was looking around the gas station and it was white folks for days, and then I realized — story of my life. Not that there’s anything wrong with white folks. It’s just, sometimes it’s nice to not feel like the only one.”

I think about what that would be like. To be on this trip and not see another white person for three states. I can’t imagine. Not that I somehow, like, identify with all white people and not with black people, but there’s something to be said for … likeness?

“Wow,” I say.

“I mean, Billings. What was my dad thinking? Why did he even take us out of Lincoln? Not like that was so great either. I mean, why couldn’t we live anywhere where there were other people like me? Why can’t I ever be around my people?” She taps the dashboard for emphasis.

“Aisha,” I say, reaching over for her hand. “I’m your people.”

She looks over at me and smiles. She takes my hand. “Yes. And no.”

Her hand feels warm, familiar. It hadn’t really occurred to me that our skin colors make us so different. I mean, I don’t really think like that. But maybe I should?

“That has to be really hard,” I say.

“Sometimes it is,” she says. “Sometimes not.”

We watch the world spin by as we speed west. My phone rings, and I see it’s my dad. I feel my body tighten. For several days now, I haven’t had to think about him. Should I pick up? I decide not to.

“Who was that?” Aisha asks.

“My dad,” I say.

She nods but doesn’t say anything. I’m glad. I don’t want to talk about it.

My phone rings again. It’s him again.

“Shit,” I say. The man is dying. I should answer it.

I take a deep breath and pick up.

“Hello,” I say, monotone.

“You left me,” a weak voice says.

I hear the alcohol in his voice. “You’re drunk,” I say, very clearly, my blood sizzling in my veins. I feel it in my feet, my knees, my skull. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“A little.”

“I won’t talk to you when you’re drunk. And by the way, I didn’t leave you. Mom did. I was three. I didn’t do anything to you. You were a drunk. You did it to me.”

He is quiet for a moment. I listen closely, and I can hear the sound of sniffling.

“I mean now,” he says, sounding like a lost boy. “You left me now.”

I’m not used to this. My dad drunk dialing me, my dad sounding this vulnerable. The sizzle in my bloodstream simmers down a little, like someone threw water onto a hot frying pan.

“I didn’t leave you,” I say, softer. “I’m coming back. Soon. There’s something I need to do. Something I need to find out, okay? I’ll be back. I promise.”

He sniffles. “People don’t come back.”

The line between me and my father feels like a thin wisp of hair being pulled tight. I don’t want it to break. He’s dying, and as much as I hate him sometimes, I cannot allow it to break. “I’ll be back,” I say, in a heavy accent like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and my dad laughs, so I laugh. But then I listen more closely and he isn’t laughing.

He’s sobbing. For the second time in my life, and the second time in a week, I hear my dad weep. He sounds like a wounded animal.

I bite down on my lip, hard. Harder. I keep pressing until it breaks and I taste the salt flow of my own blood seep into my mouth. I run my tongue over the open cut, over and over.

“I screwed it all up,” he says through his tears. “I screwed up.”

“You didn’t,” I say, but I can’t finish the sentence.

Deep sobs seep through the phone. “I’m sorry,” he says. “My boy. My boy. I’m sorry. My boy.”

I lose it. I lose my shit. The tears don’t just dribble out of my eyes, they cascade. They soak my cheeks. I am suddenly three in his arms on the couch watching cartoons, and I am six and sitting alone on the radiator in my New York bedroom, and I am twelve and standing in right field alone, and I am fourteen and wanting to tell someone, anyone, about my first wet dream. I am fifteen and wondering how to shave and my grandfather teaches me and it’s not the same. My dad. Who has always been missing. My dad, like a hole in my heart.

“Dad,” I whisper. “Daddy.”

Aisha pulls over, turns off the ignition, and leaps out of the car like there’s a bomb about to go off. I am alone in a Dodge Neon, on the side of the road in western Utah, and my dad and I are having The Conversation. The one I’ve wanted my whole entire life. The one I’ve dreaded my whole entire life.

“I ruined it all. Is it too late now?”

“No,” I say. “Never.”

“I want to do better,” he says. “I want to be a dad. Will you let me try?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I don’t have that long, but I want to try. Will you please get back here so I can try?”

“I will, I promise,” I say. I wipe my eyes and in the silence I picture him doing the same. In my mind, I see the line between us becoming thicker, fuller, just by a little bit, but still, it’s changed.

“So where are you?” he asks after a while.

I tell him the truth.

“Western Utah?” he asks. “What the hell’s in western Utah?”

“Absolutely nothing. Heading west. Don’t tell Mom. She is going to kill me.”

“She said you were visiting friends in Wyoming,” he says, and that surprises me. “What are you doing out there?”

“Long story.” Knowing the way he feels about his dad, I don’t want to upset him further right now. “I promise I’ll tell you everything when I get back.”

“Okay. Don’t wait too long, all right?”

As my mother might say, I hear what he’s saying, even if he’s not saying it. “I won’t.”

“Promise? I’m not doing too good, you know. Not guiltin’ you. Just true.”

“I promise. You promise to hold on?”

“I promise,” he says. “I will.”

“Mom driving you crazy?”

This makes him laugh. “I’m an asshole,” he says. “Your mother is a saint.”

“Sure,” I say.

“Your mom’s the love of my life, Carson. Always was, always will be.”

I so want to ask again, Why? If she was the love of your life, why didn’t you stop drinking and come with us all those years ago and avoid this? I don’t get it. But I don’t want to hurt him and he’s tender right now and we’re talking, so I don’t say anything like that.

“Wow,” I say. “Do you think she feels that way too?”

“I aim to find out,” he says.

“You have to stop drinking.”

“I know. I am. I will.”

I close my eyes and imagine my family as a puzzle. There’s always been a missing piece in the center, and now the piece is loosely in place, not quite clicked in yet, but it’s flickering. And I know that I can’t just assume my mom feels the same way as he does and she’ll take him back or that he’ll ever really stop drinking, plus there’s the dying thing, so it’s very, very complicated. But just knowing that the piece is there soothes me like a warm, heavy blanket. It feels like the midafternoon heat from the sun through the windshield.