October was still at the table, still engrossed in the book. Usually she had music playing during the day, but that morning I worked in silence while she read about the redwoods.

Around lunchtime she came back to see me with the book still in her hands.

I wiped my face on the bottom of my T-shirt and gave her my attention.

“Do you have plans tomorrow?” she said.

“No.”

She stepped closer and pointed to the cover of the book. “Will you take me here? To see the trees?”

“Tomorrow?” I laughed. “We can’t go all the way up there tomorrow.”

“You just said you didn’t have anything to do.”

I cracked my knuckles and stared at her, which caused her to point more vigorously at the cover.

“This is where I want to do the mushrooms.”

My body tensed and shook as though it were feeling the approaching future and all it held. October’s phrase “can of worms” popped into my head, and I mumbled something that was unintelligible, even to my own ears.

“Come on,” she purred. “Doesn’t this seem like the perfect place to do mushrooms?”

Fucking hell, I wasn’t going to lie to her.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it does.”

Initially, October wanted to see Hyperion, but he’s pretty far north, almost to the Oregon border, in a fairly remote area of Redwood National Park. It would have taken us a good five hours to drive there, and another couple to hike to the tree. Avenue of the Giants was only three hours away, in Humboldt County, and the state park there was filled with tons of notable redwoods worth visiting, including my favorite, Giant Tree, as well as the Flatiron Tree, and the Albino Redwood—a tree not many people knew how to find, but I did.

I suggested we leave early so we had the whole day to explore. I also wanted to make sure October was coming down off her trip before we drove home.

As we were making our plans, October pulled out her phone and said, “Before I get too excited, let me text Rae to see if she can spend the night with Diego.”

She began typing, and I let her words sink in.

“Wha . . . huh?” I stuttered, my brow furrowing against my will. “You want to spend the night there? Together?”

She paused, biting at her thumbnail while she pondered my question, as if the trouble with the idea had only just occurred to her. “Well, I thought . . . I mean . . . We certainly can’t drive home on drugs, right?”

“I’m not planning on doing the drugs. I’m planning on supervising.”

“Joe, no. You can’t let me do them alone.”

My stomach felt like it had been tossed off the top of a tall building.