I'm driving in the car with my wife. It's the middle of the day, but still it's dark and overcast and snow is lightly falling, as if just before a big storm. We're driving through the mountains; maybe the Sierras or the Rockies. We're chatting aimlessly and listening to Vivaldi when my wife tells me to pull over and pick up a hitchhiker (who is a young-ish teenaged girl, maybe fourteen- or fifteen-years-old.) I am reluctant because even though the hitchhiker looks innocent, who knows what kind of scary knife or gun she's got in her backpack. But my wife is insistant (I guess she's less paranoid and cynical than I. That's probably one reason why I love her.)
So we pick up this hitchhiker and she gets in the back seat and starts to light up a cigarette and I say, "I'm sorry, but would you mind not smoking in here?" and I can tell that she wants to sass back but since it's starting to snow harder, she puts her little, crumpled cigarette box back into her pocket and shrugs. My wife starts talking to the girl and I just kind of zone out, focusing on the road, enjoying the cadence of their conversation without having to be concerned with the words when I hear my wife say, "Isn't that right, Eric?" which probably should shock me out of my stupor, but it doesn't and I nod and say, "Uh-huh" and they continue to talk.
I'm not sure what happened next, but later on, in Reno, at a seafood buffet, my wife figures out that she and the hitchhiker-girl are cousins.