ME: If you needed transportation you could have just asked. We need our stuff. Please. The prospect of failure so soon on the tails of starting this adventure brought tears to my eyes. I blinked them back.

“If we sit here for a while, she’s bound to come back. Right? She wouldn’t just leave us,” I said, wondering if that was true.

“You would know. She’s your friend.”

“Whatever, Holly.”

I watched her race-walk to the corner and peer around the block, then do the same thing at the other corner. It was like observing a sleek cat in a cage. A cat I did not want to step in front of. A cat I did not want to be stuck in a car with. Disbelief washed over me as the realization of this moment came into focus. The fatigue started, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to function if I let myself get overwhelmed.

I hit Google on my phone. “Holly, there is a Travelodge just an eight-minute walk from here. Let’s get a room. We’ll text Summer where we are and regroup. She will come back. She’s not the kind of person who steals crap campers from women. Also, I know you hate this, but I need to close my eyes.” I got up and started walking, and with nothing left to do but follow me, Holly complied, but not without cleaning house on her list of bitchy complaints.

“Can’t you get ahold of this sleep thing?”

I was going to let it go, take the high road, but I just couldn’t. I had my phone, Apple Pay for things, and could finish this trip on my own if I had to. I didn’t need Holly and her shitty moods. I kept walking and shouted as if I was giving a lesson to a group of kids.

“You know how your aunt has MS? Ask her if she can get ahold of it. You go ahead and ask her. Say, ‘Hey, Aunt Kathy, I think if you were strong enough you could get ahold of this MS thing. All physiological difficulties are just a matter of mental weakness. I should know. I don’t have any weaknesses. I am the queen of my body and will live forever because I think it so. I am Holly Dunfee, the queen of physiology.’” Anger blew through me.

Holly, to her credit, said, “Okay. Whatever.” Just like a kid who had been chastised.

And, honestly? That felt like a big win for ol’ Sammie.

We were at the corner of Washington Boulevard and Sepulveda, right in front of Starbucks, and I knew at that moment there was a God. “I’m going to buy a Nitro Cold Brew, then I’m getting a room. I’ll drink my coffee after my ten-minute nap.” I pulled open the door, and a blast of cool air hit my face. “When I come out, I want you to consider that this is happening to me too. That you and I are on the same side.”

Inside the cool, dark cave of Starbucks, music from an indie band crooned from the overhead speakers, and I put my hands on the counter to steady myself. I was tremulous. A woman with a slim silver nose ring said, “Can I help you?”

“Yes.” But my mind was on what I’d just said to Holly. I recognized that voice of mine, the straight-up, no-nonsense reasoning tone. It was my parenting voice. I used it when Maddie was being a snotty teen about her curfew or that one time she wanted to stay in a hotel room after prom with her date and a bunch of friends. I’d get so tired of being pushed that I’d go off. Which is what Maddie would say: “Wow, go off, Mom.”

I did it with Maddie but no one else. I was impressed that I’d used it on Holly.

“Would you like a coffee?” The woman had pretty almond-shaped eyes and blonde braids on either side of her face.

I nodded. “Nitro Cold Brew. Iced.” I went through the motions of paying, but I was searching around for my fatigue, and for once, it didn’t seem to be present.

This is how cults get people to do stuff. You take people out of their normal circumstances, screw with their sense of time, add bossy people with strong ideologies to the mix, and the next thing you know, you are doing things you normally wouldn’t do, like steal campers and yell at the person you are most afraid of. I picked up my coffee and said to myself, Samantha, you are on new ground. Take it slowly, which was different from what I usually said to myself which was, Just shut up.

Without speaking, Holly and I checked into the Travelodge, booked a room with two double beds, and I crawled into one of them. I texted the address to Summer, hoping she would come back. The sheets were cool, and I barely noticed the dampness in the room, the two straggly palm trees that grew outside our window, or the steady stream of cars outside our door. I did hear Holly say, just as I nodded off, “I bet you’re a good mom.”

“I am,” I said, and I was gone.

I woke to Holly’s voice, at least a version of Holly’s voice I hadn’t heard for decades.

“Okay, sweetie. It’s okay. I’m sure it’s nothing. Lie down. Are you drinking enough water?”

I knew immediately she was talking to her wife, Rosie. I’d heard that voice so many years ago when we were friends, if I wasn’t feeling well or needed a tiny snooze. It kicked off a feel-good molecule in my brain, and I sighed.

She waited, and in even softer tones said, “I’ll be home soon. Call your sister. Ask her to come. I love you.”

I wondered if Rosie knew how lucky she was to have Holly. When Holly was your friend, it was like having a superhero on your side. I could only imagine if she was your spouse. When Jeff died, I’d hoped she’d come to the funeral, and when she hadn’t, I’d curled up with baby Maddie and poured all the love I had in a holding cell waiting for Holly into my daughter. I drip, drip, dripped it into Maddie’s ears, saying, “I’ll always love you. I’ll never leave you when you need me. You can do anything. You are the world.” Like a song before bedtime, I assured her of love everlasting.

Still on the phone, Holly said, “What do you mean, it’s good for me to be away? No, it’s not.” She had none of the bristly irritation in her voice that she used with me. She was listening and responding not as the imperious Holly but as the soft Holly I knew from so many years ago, the one who would say just before I’d go to sit for an exam: “Sam, you are good at math. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.”

“I don’t need more people. I like the few I do have.” She paused and added, “I like our tiny village, and I’m coming back to it as soon as I can.” There was another silence, and then she said, “I know. I wouldn’t have met you. I know, honey. Now stop worrying about me and go to bed. Always.”

I opened my eyes and saw Holly’s straight shoulders, slumped. She faced the wide window that opened to the street, in the same position as when I’d fallen asleep. I rolled onto my elbow. “Everything all right, Holly? Is Rosie okay?”

Holly startled and cleared her throat. “Yes. Fine. I used your phone. You should put a password on this. Some beautiful person is texting you.”

Annoyed, I swung my legs off the bed. I’d slept for an hour, according to the digital clock at the bedside. I reached for my blessed cup of coffee and took a sip.

“I didn’t know you had a guy.”

“I don’t.”

“Beautiful Drew says, ‘You up?’ Nothing says booty like you up?”

“It’s a joke. He’s joking.” I know I was smiling like it was much more. I couldn’t help the pleasure that each ding of my phone sent through me. I was going to explain that Drew was the physician we’d talked to in Katie’s hospital room to fill her in on what he was doing for us. Did I want to say this while hoping it was something else? Would Holly confront me later if I didn’t get it exactly right now?

“Now what?” said Holly.

“She’ll come back. I’m sure of it.” Holly walked my phone over, dropped it on the bed next to me. “I think you know she will.”

We were unused to conversation. Chatting seemed like the simplest of things, but it was a gateway drug to friendship, and if you were working backward like Holly and I, that gate had to be unlocked. We needed a prompt that wasn’t a gauntlet.

I opened my phone and googled the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. “Let’s see where we’re going.” The page loaded, and I read, “The sanctuary has been open for thirty years. The nation’s largest no-kill sanctuary.”

“No-kill?”

“No-kill means they want to care for or find homes for all animals.”

“How big is it?”

“Geez. It says here there are three thousand seven hundred acres where we’re going, and they lease another seventeen thousand acres of state and federal land.”

“Really.” Holly sounded impressed and mystified.

“They have dogs, cats, bunnies, birds, pigs, horses, and other animals. One thousand six hundred animals.”

“Running around? Are we going to have to walk around and find him?”

I thought of Peanut, galloping with a stately mustang or kicking it up with other big dogs, ears flapping in the dry heat. The image made me wish for that for myself.

I said, “I hope so,” at the same time as Holly said, “That sounds like chaos.”

We both smirked. Unsurprised at our different reactions.

“It looks organized, though. Here’s a map. Check it out.”

Holly put on glasses.

“I have readers too. All of a sudden I couldn’t see anything close up.”