2

“I have really, really, really got to go pee! Like really, really bad! I don't think I can hold it any more!” Sunny announces loudly to everyone in the car. She is holding her pants and squirming in her seat, with her legs crossed tightly.

Andy rolls his eyes at his daughter's antics and Lacey smiles widely. Jack had to stop and pee about fifteen minutes ago on the side of the road because he was 'about to explode'. Pulling into a deserted road lined with towering trees for privacy, Andy had let the boy out to do his business. Sunny had been adament that she was fine, she did not have to pee. Besides, she informed them, she was a big girl and she could hold it in if she needed to.

Now they are back on the highway, two hours into their trip and she decides that she does, in fact, need to take a bathroom break. Lacey knows exactly what her daughter is doing. She does not want to have to relieve herself on the side of the road. She wants her father to stop at a convenience store or a rest stop somewhere so she can use an actual toilet. 

Sunny won't relieve herself outside. She has informed them many times before that peeing outside is for boys and animals, not little girls. Lacey merely grins at her assertion. Not that she blames the little girl. She doesn't pee on the side of the road, either. She has been potty trained since she was two and she has no intention on going back on her learnings now. It's toilets or nothing for her as well. Although Andy argues with it, admonishing that if a person really needed to urinate that they would be glad to go wherever they could. 

Sunny told her father that he doesn't understand what it is like to be a lady. That he is a boy and they have it easier, so he couldn't imagine what she has to go through. When she goes there with Andy, it leaves him stunned, much to Lacey's amusement. Lacey, but mostly Andy, has raised Sunny to be a strong willed female with her own opinions and firm beliefs. Now, he gets to reap the benefits as he is in a standoff with her about where she will pee at.

"Sunny, if you have to potty that bad then I will pull over and you can take care of business behind a tree!" Andy tells the child.

"No! I absolutely can't pee outside Daddy! Someone could see me!" The little girl shouts, offronted by the mere suggestion.

"Hence the going behind a tree! The only thing that might see you is a dang bird! Your mother can take you and she will stand guard, so no one can see you!" Andy tells her, losing patience.

"No! I just can't do it. I would rather pee in my pants than pee outside." The little girl argues. Sunny remains adamant that someone would see her pee and that is unacceptable in her world. 

"If you pee your pants and it gets on me, I am going to-"

"Not do a darn thing, but sit there quietly." Lacey interrupts her son's threats. "Start practicing by being quiet now and staying out of a conversation that does not concern you."

"Sunny-"

"I can't pee pee outside, Daddy." The little girl gives him her wide, puppy dog eyes and bats her lashes. "Please just let me pee in a toilet so I'm not scared." Sunny knows just how to get her father to see things her way. 

Lacey grins when Sunny wins the battle of wills and Andy, with a deeply resigned sigh, tells her that there is a rest stop five miles ahead that he will stop at. He looks exacerbated with the child and Lacey has to stop herself from chuckling out loud. There was never any doubt in her mind that Sunny would win her Dad over and get her way. Andy sees the small smile on her face and asks her, “Do you find something amusing?”

“Me? Nope. Not at all. Nothing funny here.”

“Are you sure? You have this little smile right here..” Andy lifts a finger to her face and caresses the side of her mouth. "It seems to suggest otherwise."

Lacey can't help it, her grin widens. “You wanted your daughter to stand up for herself.. You didn't want her to be a pushover or to lets boys walk all over her.. She needed a backbone and some grit, isn't that what you said?”

“Ugh, I know. I know. I created the little monster..”

“Now you get to deal with it.” Lacey teases him and he chuckles.

He lifts his eyes to the rearview mirror to look at his daughter in the back seat, no longer putting on a dramatic show to get her way, coloring in her book and he grins. “It is worth the headache. She will not be one of those girls that goes along with the crowd and gets herself into trouble just to please her friends. And I doubt that she will be one of those girls that ever lets a guy tell her what to do or push her around-”

“No way. She is already a little feminist. The other morning Jack asked her to hand him the cereal because she was standing right beside the pantry.... she proceeds to tell him that just because she is a woman does not mean she is there to serve him or to make him food. She let him know that he was entirely capable of getting up and getting his own cereal, because she serves no man.” Lacey tells Andy. "Then she flounced across the kitchen and sat down at the table, staring at him in challenge, practically daring him to say something to her."

For a minute Andy just stares out at the road, giving no reply to his wife. He is picturing this scene in his mind and can almost see the hand gestures of his daughter as she scolds her brother. Turning to his wife he burst into loud, boistorous laughter. “Did she really?”

“Yes, really! I had to give her a twenty minute lecture on how it is kind to sometimes do nice things for others, like handing someone something since we are already up and standing near it. That it does not mean that you are giving in to them, it just makes you polite. I don't think she was in agreement that helping her brother would be a kindness and not just catering to his whims. I think at heart, our little girl is a bra-burning, card carrying women's libber.” 

Andy just chuckles and shakes his head in an amusing fashion. “It is so not funny.” Lacey scolds him with a smile, even though she found the situation amusing as well.

“She sure is a handful, that is for sure.” Andy comments fondly, with another look in the back seat.

“That is such a nice way to put it.” Unfortunately we cannot call her a little tyrant, although she often displays unladylike actions. 

They fall silent as Andy changes lanes to get to the exit that is approaching, which leads to the rest stop. When he pulls into a spot, Lacey and Sunny both get out of the vehicle quickly. They head to the plain brick building that houses the toilets. Going to the women's side, Lacey notices that there are not any women in there. The place is empty. Not only is it empty, it looks almost deserted.

She stands outside of the stall while Sunny takes care of her business, holding the door closed. When the little girl is finally done and she flushes the toilet, Lacey ushers her to the sink to help her wash her hands. As they are both soaping up their fingers, someone enters the small, windowless room.

A man stands there, looking around. He looks to be in his late fifties or sixties. He is wearing a pair of stained up blue jean pants and a ripped shirt.  Something seems to be off about the man and he sets Lacey on edge. He doesn't say anything to them. He just stands right inside of the entrance, looking around as if he is confused by how he came to be in there.

Lacey turns off the faucets on the two sinks very slowly, all the while watching him from the corner of her eye. She doesn't want to make any sudden movements to attract his attention to them. Grabbing on to Sunny, she pulls her to her and gently shoves the child behind her back, while putting herself between the man and her little girl.

A few tense moments pass as the man surveys the room with a vacant stare. Lacey is getting uncomfortable not knowing what the mans intentions are. She doesn't want to give him any reason to harm them. Finally the man moves further into the room, heading into one of the  stalls, Lacey takes the opportunity to get her and her daughter out of there.

Grabbing Sunny, she lifts the little girl into her arms and runs from the room as fast her legs will carry the two of them. The little girl is scared and whimpers into her mother's neck, holding on for dear life, as her mother's feet pound against the hard pavement as they escape the bathroom. She sure hopes that Andy and Jack are in the car and ready to go. She wants to get out of this place as soon as they can.

Andy must have been watching for them, because she has barely made it halfway across the parking lot when he is suddenly there, taking their little girl from her arms and demanding to know what is happening, while wrapping his arms around his wife. Lacey is breathing so heavily, panting for breath, that she can't answer him right away.

Lacey urges him to get back into the car, so he quickly straps the whimpering child into the back seat. It is obvious that Sunny is terrified and even Jack can sense her discomfort, and he begins to comfort her like a wonderful big brother should. 

Once Lacey is inside of the vehicle with the doors shut and locked, she manages to relax enough to fully catch her breath. It takes her a few moments to calm down, but in that time she is able to tell Andy to drive. She wants to leave that rest stop as fast as they possibly can.

Andy does as he is asked, driving away with haste. When he is a few minutes away, Lacey tells him what happened in the rest stop bathrooms. He listens intently as she tells him about the man coming in and how he looked slightly unhinged. She told him how she put Sunny behind her for protection but was still scared. She explained how it made her uncomfortable that he blocked the only exit. 

“I think he might have had something wrong with him. Mentally, I mean.. He didn't appear to intend us any harm. In fact, he didn't appear to be paying us the slightest bit of attention. But his sudden appearance in the women's bathroom just caused me to panic. I might have over-reacted a bit..”

“No. You were uncomfortable with a situation, so you got the heck out of it. That is not an overreaction. That is a basic instinct. Fight or flight, honey. You did the right thing.” Andy lays his hand on her leg in a gesture meant to offer comfort to her. He can sense that she is still perturbed by what happened.

“Even if he did not appear to be a threat, that could have changed in a split second. It is way better to cause a tiny scene by running away from him than it is to be stuck in a small, enclosed space with a complete stranger.”

Lacey nods, hearing his words. Now, looking back on the incident, she is embarrassed by her behavior. She knows that he says it was the right call, but she thinks she might have over reacted considering she didn't know the details of the stranger.

Maybe the man was looking for his wife. Maybe the men's bathroom stalls where full and he needed to use the toilet urgently and he thought that it would be okay to use the women's since the place had previously been deserted. Maybe he had a mental disability or was a senile man who merely wandered into the wrong place. 

In any of those scenerios, she is the hysteric woman who was acting crazy. On the small chance that he did mean her harm, she is glad that they were able to get out without anything bad happening. She was able to get her daughter out of the situation with minimal upset.

Sunny seems to have already forgotten the ordeal since Jack gave her his gaming console to play with, to make her feel better. He is asking her if she is excited for Santa's visit and listens to her as she prattles on about everything that she hopes that Santa will bring her. She lists everything from a small book set to major electronics that she asked for. 

It is nearing one thirty in the afternoon and Lacey's stomach growls. Reaching for the cooler and the bag of snacks in the floor, she asks the children if they are hungry as well. When she gets a resounding yes from everyone in the car, she tells Andy to pull to the side of the road for a few minutes. She figures it is time to have a luncheon. 

Passing out the sandwiches and the sodas to everyone, she then hands them each a bag of chips and a packaged snack cake. Opening the tupperware bowl filled with sliced strawberries and the bowl filled with grapes, she sits them on the arm rests between the seats. Sunny is excited, exclaiming that they get to have a Christmas picnic in the car.

They have eaten all of their food within five minutes of Lacey passing it out and she has pulled out a folded brown paper grocery store bag that she thought to bring for them to put the trash in.

Once she had cleaned up their mess and thrown all of the plastic wrappers away, they are ready to get back out on the road. Both kids go back to their music and their toys for entertainment on the long ride. Andy turns the radio on once more. The new Garth Brooks song is playing and they both sing along to it loudly and off key.

“Long... neck bottle. Let go of my hand.. Hey jukebox! Don't start playing that song again... 'cause there's a girl at home who loves me.. you know, she won't understand.. longneck bottle.. let go of my hand.”

When the song is over, the two of them look at each other and laugh with mirth. "We really should take this act on the road." Andy tells her with a grin.

"Really? Because I was thinking that we really shouldn't quit our day jobs any time soon." Lacey says in response and Andy laughs again. 

"Speak for yourself. I think that I posess both the good looks and the talent to become the next big thing in country music. Toby Keith has nothing on me and my vocal talent."

"Sure, honey." Lacey playfully pats his arm in a consoling way. "Keep telling yourself that!"

They laugh and bicker for a while, teasing each other in a loving way. Even the children join in for a while. They criticize each other until it starts to get nerve wracking and they are told to go back to their own devices for entertainment.

The next hour pretty much passes the same way as all the others have. The children are so quiet in the back seat that you could almost forget that they are even back there. Andy and Lacey have the radio on, and they flip through channels to find songs. Most stations are playing Christmas songs, seeing as it is the day before.

They ran out of range for the station that was playing regular country music and after their third time of hearing I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas within a twenty minute time span they are missing it dearly. Finally Andy turns the dial until the radio is just a bit of white noise in the background.

“Look everyone! We are now leaving the great state of Montana!” Andy announces loudly and the kids each look out their window at the passing scenery. They are so focused on looking that it is almost as if they expect to actually see the state line drawn on the ground. The thought amuses Lacey and she grins.

“Alright, kids, we are now in North Dakota!” He shouts and the kids cheer and call out 'yay'.

“Land of wheat and beans. The home of the World's biggest burger, buffalo and holstein cow monuments.” Lacey comments dryly. They have a huge buffalo statue and a huge cow statue that are sort of their claims to fame. They also hold the record for the biggest burger made. It fed eight thousand people and weighed over three thousand pounds.

“Yeah, they do like having the title 'World's largest' in front of random things, don't they?” Andy asks her with a grin.

“Apparently they do.” 

“Three hours down, only nine more to go.” Andy tells Lacey and suddenly a small part of her wants to turn around and go back home. She is uneasy about these feelings that she keeps getting sporadically.

That is the second time since they have left their home that she has felt this way, but once again she chooses to ignore it. She chalks it up to just being frazzled because of the incident in the bathroom. She had a small fright and she thinks that it is what accounts for her wanting to go back home, so she once again does not even mention it to her husband. She doesn't want to be the Debbie Downer of the trip. 

With the stops they have made and the congestion that they run into on the highway just over into North Dakota, where they are doing road construction, they are delayed by well over an hour.

Sitting in the bumper to bumper traffic, where the flow of cars have stalled, Andy and Lacey play eye spy with the children, to hopefuly keep them entertained. It is spitting snow and the sun is sinking low in the sky. It is well after three in the afternoon and it will be dark by five fifteen or so, thanks to daylight savings time.

“I spy with my little eye, something... that is... gray!” Jack says from his spot in the back seat and everyone looks around in search of the gray object.

“Their bumper?” Andy asks, pointing to a new Ford truck in front of them.

“Uh, nope.”

“Their tire circle thing?” Sunny asks, pointing to the rim of the tire on the vehicle that is beside of them.

“Nuh huh.” Jack shakes his head back and forth in the negative.

Looking around, Lacey spots it on their side of the road. The scrap of metal that she can't quite make out what it is, but she points to it excitedly and says “that thing?”

“Yep! Mom wins!” Jack says in an excited voice, bouncing up and down in his seat. 

“Then that makes it my turn.” Lacey says, looking around. “Hmmm... I spy with my little eye.. something... brown!” Lacey decided on the dog in the car just ahead of them. It keeps sticking it's nose through the small space where the window is opened. The animal likes to lick at the falling snow flakes which Lacey finds adorable.

“That tree trunk!” Sunny guesses, pointing.

“No, sweetie. Guess again.”

“That old truck up there.” Andy guesses.

“That's more of a tan vehicle with rust on it, honey. Keep trying.” Lacey tells him.

“Dad's hair and beard?” Jack asks hopefully.

“Sorry, no.. but that was a really good guess, sweet heart!” Lacey tells him. After a few more wrong guesses, Sunny finally says the dog and Lacey shouts yes. The little girl does a small victory squirm in her seat and everyone chuckles at her antics.

Finally, traffic starts inching forward slowly, much to everyone's relief. It is extremely slow going so it is a few minutes after four when they finally make it past the construction zone and the one lane traffic. Once they reach the multiple lanes again, the people all go well over the speed limit, despite the dusting of snow, since everyone's travel had been delayed significantly. Everyone is eager to make up for lost time. The unsurity of the weather was another reason travellers were eager to stay on schedule as much as possible.

“We are going to be much later getting there because at some point we are going to have to stop for gas. We are already below a quarter of a tank.” Andy tells Lacey, who nods. She had already figured that out for herself.

“This trip is already off to a rough start and it doesn't seem to be getting any better as it goes on.” She comments morosely and Andy nods his head in agreement.

“At least the kids are being good, though.”

“Don't jinx it.”