Morning traffic was heavy as we left the San Francisco Airport rental car center, and Dad was silent as Google Maps navigated us onto the freeway. I stared out the window as we passed Colma and Daly City, continued up the stop-and-start length of 19th Avenue, then through Golden Gate Park and the Presidio. Finally, we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, glowing red in the sun. To the right, the glittering bay and Alcatraz; to the left, the blue of the Pacific beyond the suspension lines, and then we were swallowed by the rainbow entry of the Waldo Tunnel through the Marin Hills.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to spend the summer on Martha’s Vineyard with my friends, not in the remote woods of Marin County with my grandmother. The interior of the car suddenly felt airless, and I fumbled for the button to unroll the window. Traffic noise and warm dry air blasted inside. It smelled like Northern California: brown grass and sunshine and something else, some kind of tree or plant that grew here, and I remembered Grandpa taking me out on his precarious rooftop deck on late-summer nights to look at the stars. An ache inside me. He died five years ago, and I still missed him.

“Smells like California,” Dad said loudly over the rushing wind. They were the first words he’d spoken since we got in the car.

I glanced at him, and maybe because I had been thinking about Grandpa, I noticed how Dad looked like him. His eyebrows were bushy in the same way. “Yeah,” I replied.

Dad gave me an eager smile. “You always loved visiting here.”

I knew he was trying to get me to feel better about this summer, but I didn’t feel better and I didn’t want to pretend like I did.

“It’s too bad we never visited here with your mother,” he said. “She has family here, too.”

I felt like I must have known this before, but even so, it surprised me. “Who?” I asked.

“Some cousins. They’re out in the East Bay, but I think they used to live in Chinatown.” He looked at me encouragingly. “You should ask your mom.”

Now I knew what he was trying to do: get me to call her. But she had a phone, too. She could call me if she wanted.

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