“Oh, no, Mom. You didn’t tell her either? We agreed that you’d call.”

“I made an executive decision not to,” I say in my most executive tone. “If she knows we’re coming, she’ll rush to fix the house or search for a gun. If we really want to know what’s happening there, we have to surprise her.” Besides, once I called her, I would be committed. But right up until the minute we left, I wanted the option of changing my mind—which I’ve done a dozen times in the last few days. It’s about those memories.

And here comes another, triggered by nothing more than a sign to Westport. Mom wanted to stop there. When Dad refused, they argued. After Elizabeth’s disappearance, when their marriage crumbled, we realized that he’d had a lover there.

Disconcerted by how quickly the angst returns, I focus on the music—Sheeran again, “Perfect” this time. I tell Joy about a friend who lived in Fairfield, an innocent enough memory. But by the time we pass Bridgeport, I’m back on the Aldiss family road trip. This time it’s my needing a bathroom and Daddy refusing to stop. Then, as we approach New Haven, I remember being rejected from Yale and Daddy blaming it on my portfolio, since, he claimed, photography wasn’t “real art.” Coming up on New London, where I did go to college, I remember the stomach cramps I used to have heading home for vacation. I’m not feeling full-out cramps now, just small knots of apprehension.

Another hunger complaint comes from Joy as we pass Mystic. It’s after two, and I would have been hungry myself had it not been for those knots, but when I offer to stop, she says, “It’s only twenty minutes more, Mom,” like I was the one who had complained, like I’d been complaining for the last hour. Hunger is her version of Are we there yet?

We are closing in. Leaving I-95, we’re on Route 234, a.k.a. Pequot Trail, which is a name I used to love, though now it brings us closer to the last place I want to be. Pawcatuck slows us down, same old for a Friday afternoon in June, but too soon we cross into Rhode Island, pass under the railroad bridge, and find ourselves in downtown Westerly.

Turn back! cries my scared little self. But it’s too late. Way too late.