Abby looked through the restaurant’s windows. She could see Mark, at their table, looking at his phone, smiling at the server as she refilled Abby’s water. “How many people did you say?” she heard herself asking.
“If you want to swing by tomorrow, I can give you all the details. This would be, like, an all-time good deed. You’ll have a star in your crown in heaven, as my sainted mother would say.”
Abby looked at her boyfriend. She considered that prickle of unease, the dark, doubting thoughts slithering through her head. She thought about how leading a ride through upstate New York for two weeks would keep her from having to make a choice; how the trip would buy her a little time. She’d be able to think, figure out what was wrong—or, better yet, convince herself that nothing was wrong. Nobody got the total package, and if Mark was 99 percent of what she wanted, how foolish and selfish would she have to be to hold out for more?
“Tell you what,” Abby said to Lizzie. “How about I swing by your place after dinner?”
* * *
Abby had lived next to Mr. and Mrs. Mathers for her entire life, but it wasn’t until she was eight years old that she finally met their grown-up daughter, Lizzie, who lived on a houseboat in Portland, Oregon. After Mr. Mathers died, Lizzie had come back east to clear out their house and put it on the market and move her mother into assisted living. Once the house had sold, Lizzie had returned to Portland. Fifteen years later, after Sally Mathers had succumbed to a combination of dementia and heart disease, Lizzie had come back east. She’d used the inheritance her mother had left her to augment her savings and purchase a tiny three-story trinity-style rowhouse in Queen Village, a neighborhood adjacent to Bella Vista, where Abby lived. That had been her home base for the last ten years.
Abby loved Lizzie’s house. Trinities, as the name suggests, are three stories—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—and classic trinities had just one room per story, with the kitchen traditionally in the basement. Lizzie’s trinity had been constructed in the early 1800s but had been enlarged and renovated since then. Her basement level now held an office-slash-guest room, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three of its four walls. Each shelf was filled with books and framed photographs and souvenirs from Lizzie’s travels. There was a bedroom, a dressing room, and a full bath on the trinity’s top floor. The living room and kitchen, as well as a tiny powder room tucked underneath the staircase, were on the ground floor. Lizzie’s sleek road bike, with aero tubes and disc brakes and glossy red paint on its carbon-fiber frame, hung on the wall by the door. The bike was a work of art, gorgeous and aerodynamic, light enough to lift with a single finger. Lizzie had bought it as a reward for herself, after her last round of radiation.
“So it’s twelve days of riding with two days off,” Lizzie said. She and Abby were sitting on her couch, with Lizzie’s dog, Grover, an irascible and elderly gray schnauzer, curled between them. Lizzie had her laptop open in her lap, and was reading the itinerary off the screen. “ ‘Welcome to Breakaway Bicycle Tours, where adventure awaits; possibilities unfold with every turn of the wheel, and there’s something new to see around every bend in the road!’ ”
Abby rolled her eyes. Lizzie smirked and kept reading.
“ ‘Your journey through the small towns and wide-open spaces of Upstate New York follows the recently opened Empire State Trail, which, at seven hundred and fifty miles, is the longest multiuse trail in the country. The trail combines existing rail-trails and runs from New York City north to the Canadian border, and west from Albany to Buffalo. You’ll ride on paved trail, crushed cinders, and you’ll occasionally share roads with cars, as you travel from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan to Buffalo, then west to Niagara Falls. On average, mileage will range between fifty to seventy miles a day. A sag wagon will transport your luggage—and you, if you’ve had enough! A ride leader will keep you on course, and a mechanic will be on hand to keep you rolling. Breakfasts and lunches are included, as are lodgings in hotels or bed-and-breakfasts. We’ll eat dinner as a group, but riders are always free to make their own arrangements or explore on their own. This is the perfect trip for couples, families, or first-time cycling tourists.’ ” Abby listened as Lizzie read through the two-week-long itinerary: “ ‘New York City to Mount Kisco, Mount Kisco to Poughkeepsie, Poughkeepsie to Hudson, Hudson to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Utica, Utica to Syracuse, Syracuse to Seneca Falls—you get a rest day there—and then Seneca Falls to Rochester, Rochester to Medina, Medina to Buffalo, and another day off in Niagara Falls.’ ”
“You realize I don’t know where any of those places are.” Years ago Abby had done a weeklong trip through the Finger Lakes region but didn’t remember any of the towns’ names. She knew that Albany was north of New York City, and she’d read about the Hudson Valley in the New York Times Sunday real estate section, which had written about the Brooklyn residents who’d fled the city during the worst of the lockdowns and bought places in the country. Beyond that, she was lost.
Lizzie looked up from her screen. “The good news is, because you’re riding mostly on a trail, there’s no map reading. You don’t have to worry about people getting lost. And I know you can handle the mileage.”
Abby had to admit that, as far as first rides to lead went, this sounded close to ideal. But she was still nervous. “And just to confirm, I’m the only leader?”
Lizzie nodded. “Jasper will be on the road, you’ll be on the trail.” Lizzie leaned over her laptop again. “Here’s who’s signed up. A family of four—mom, dad, two teenage boys. Then there’s a mother and a teenage daughter, four senior citizens, a husband and wife and two single guys.”
Abby ran through the roster in her mind. Moms and senior citizens were encouraging. Single guys, less so. “Do you really think I can do this?”
Lizzie closed her computer and gave Abby a look that combined fondness and exasperation. Her iron-gray hair was cut short on the sides, left long enough to brush at her earlobes on top. She wore oversize horn-rimmed glasses, a black tee shirt advertising WXPN, Philadelphia’s alternative radio station, cropped linen pants, and her usual assortment of silver rings on all five fingers plus her thumb, along with bracelets and ear cuffs. “Yes. You really, one hundred percent, can do this.” She leaned across the couch and put her hand on Abby’s shoulder, looking deeply into Abby’s eyes. “I believe in you.”
“What if someone’s bike falls apart?”
“You call Jasper and wait on the side of the road until he comes and makes it all better.”
“What if someone dies in their tent?” Once, Lizzie led a bikepacking trip where that very thing had happened.
“No tents, remember? But if someone expires in their hotel room, you call the authorities, get the rest of the group on the road, and tell Marj. You don’t even have to notify the next of kin.” Lizzie patted Abby’s knee. “See? Easy!”
Abby licked her lips. “What if nobody listens to me?” She let the quiet part stay quiet: What if they don’t listen to me because they don’t think I know what I’m doing? What if they assume that I’m out of shape and can’t actually help them because I’ll spend the whole time huffing and puffing? Which, of course, was followed by an even worse thought—What if I do spend the whole time huffing and puffing?—even though Abby knew it was unlikely. Fifty or sixty or even seventy miles a day wasn’t nothing, but it was doable. By her, at her current size and level of fitness.