Millie

Chapter Five- Road tripping as three

There's normal road trips, the ones you take for fun or to get to a vacation destination, and then there's this type of road trip ... the one where you felt like you were in a hostage situation the entire time, and wondered what you did in a past life to deserve this.

In my case I was being held hostage by my adoptees that I hadn't intended on adopting. They both required me to feed them more than pop tarts, and keep them alive cross country. I hadn't ever been particularly maternal, and it didn't come naturally to me, but I was the only adult on this camper and I had to grow up and learn.

"Do we have to take the cat out everywhere with us" Veda whines. "It's embarrassing me"

"What is" I ask, smirking slightly to know exactly what it was.

We were walking in Oklahoma. A nature trail around where my mother and birth mother had lived, and somewhere Moira had shown me pictures of. It was their spot when they had been small, and the location of the painting on my mothers wall. I had taken Veda back through with me to show her more of where her Mom was from.

It turned out that Veda knew less about our birth mother than I did. Her view of her seemed skewed and fictional, almost like someone had purposefully moulded her view of her. Veda had only been a toddler when Millie passed away, so how she would have this negative view of her... it had to be one passed down by her father. I disliked that, how he had painted his own picture of her, and it was nothing like Moria's picture. Why did parents do that?! Unless it was positive, why destroy a child's view of their other parent?! If indeed they were useless and selfish, the child would see that themselves one day... they didn't need to hear the rest.

Veda looked at me and pointed with both hands to the space craft style backpack I was wearing that housed Norman. He was looking out eagerly as he watched birds flit through the sky.

"That" she groaned. "It's awful... why not leave him in the silver vibrator"

"He leaves unfortunate gifts on my bed if I dare leave him an hour"

"Why would you adopt that cat from a shelter... he's a lifer..."

"I didn't. He's my friend Kates" I say turning a corner on the trail and stopping to admire the landscape and the beauty of it.

"Then why do you have him" she asked.

"Because she needed to get laid and find a man, and Norman is the greatest and most vicious Cock blocker in history. If he was a human he would have been an absolute asshole"

"He is an absolute asshole" she countered.

I nod in agreement, and undo the backpack, taking him out on his extendable lead and letting him down onto his feet.

"Stretch your legs" I order "the vet wants you to lose half of your body weight before we get back to Oregon"

Norman looked around and then sat down, flopping onto his side and twitching his tail.

"Does he ever walk" Veda asked, as we both stood hand on hip looking down at him.

"No" I deadpan. "But let's carry on walking and maybe he will catch up to us"

Veda and I leave him and move down across the open meadow ahead of us. "We can have a picnic down here" I say pointing to the perfect spot among wildflowers. "As soon as we open a packet he will run down here like a bull charging a red flag"

"Good point" she says looking back at him. He was still lazing in the sun, watching us go, the lead getting further and further away.

As soon as the lead snagged I tied it to a tree and we sat down. I threw out the blanket I brought and we took a seat cross legged.