Off the Map (Beck Sisters, #3)

by Trish Doller

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. —MARK TWAIN

“You only get so many trips around the sun,” he said, tapping his first two fingers against his temple. “And some of us don’t even get to keep the memories until our lights go out.”

If you just keep going in the same direction, he’ll say, eventually you’ll end up somewhere. It might not be where you intended to go, but you won’t be lost anymore.

Eamon’s desire to go is strong, but he also seems to want assurance that he can safely return. It’s almost like he’s waiting for someone to give him permission.

I’m realizing that following arbitrary rules isn’t always the best way to go through life. Sometimes you need to make your own rules.

“Because we humans like keeping tangible reminders of intangible moments,” Anna says. “And I think it’s good to have some keepsakes, but it’s important to know which of them are emotional anchors. Those you can let go.”

There’s a tiny voice in the back of my head that says maybe it’s too soon after losing my dad to be this happy. But there’s a deeper, gruffer voice—it sounds a lot like Biggie—that says now is the perfect time to be happy. That every moment is the perfect time to be happy.

One of the reasons Biggie loved Joshua Tree was because it was the setting to a wild story in which Gram Parsons—his favorite singer and member of The Flying Burrito Brothers—had made a pact with his manager that if either of them died prematurely, the other would take the dead body to Joshua Tree and cremate it. When Gram Parsons died in 1973 from a drug overdose in a motel not far from Joshua Tree, his manager ended up stealing his corpse from LAX and driving it out to the desert before dousing it with gasoline and setting it on fire. Even though Gram Parsons is buried in Louisiana, his fans—Biggie included—still make the trek into the wilderness to leave trinkets in his memory.

There’s a quote attributed to Mark Twain that goes, I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.