My father looks at him, then me, curiously. “Don’t worry about that,” I tell both of them. A two-hour drive there and back is more than doable. My flight’s tomorrow afternoon.
Besides, I don’t know if I can leave this mess the way it is. Not when it’s a mess I had a role in creating. I’ll feel better once I see Maggie and know that she’s okay. That my words didn’t cause irreversible damage.
“Are you sure?” my father asks hesitantly. “Jacob and I can manage.”
And something about that phrasing, about the fact that Jacob and my father are so clearly a pair—that my father would rather rely on him than me, that heknowshim better than me—makes me double down.
“I’m sure,” I say. “It’s not a problem.”
Jacob enters the address for the hotel on his phone, and the robotic GPS voice calls out directions.
After twenty minutes or so, my father leans his head against the window, his soft snores filling the space.
“He always could sleep through anything,” I say, remembering how he used to fall asleep through every movie he put on for me when I was a kid.
“He’s exhausted,” Jacob says sharply. “He’s been through a lot.”
“I know that.”
“Then just—just let him sleep.”
My hands tighten around the wheel. “I am.”
The air between us grows tense, and neither of us say anything for a while.
At the roundabout, take the second exit,the robotic GPS voice chimes, and I follow the directions.
I can feel Jacob’s gaze on the side of my face.
He leans back in his seat, his knees spreading farther apart. Themovement makes his kilt climb higher, exposing more skin between the end of the fabric and the start of his knee-high socks.
I focus back on the road.
“They didn’t expect—” Jacob clears his throat. “They didn’t think you were coming to the wedding. You didn’t RSVP.”
“I didn’t see the invitation until later. I emailed, though, to say I would be there.”
“You couldn’t call?”
My mouth pulls into a grimace. That had been an option, of course, but phone conversations with my father have always been…tense. I wanted to avoid that. But maybe I should have called him. Should have given them some warning that I would be here.
Though I don’t know what business that is of Jacob’s, or why he thinks he can interrogate me like this.
“Did you memorize the guest list or something?” I ask.
He blinks. “What?”
“How do you know I didn’t RSVP?”
“Because I was the one in charge of it. I tallied all the responses.” He pauses. “Your dad asked about you every week or so, you know, to see whether you’d responded.”
I glance at the rearview mirror and catch my father still sleeping, his mouth slightly parted. My stomach twists.
“I didn’t know,” I say. “He didn’t tell me—I didn’t know he wanted me there.”
“Then why did you come?” Jacob asks. And there’s something about the way he says it, the frustration underlying his words, that makes the subtext clear: All of this is my fault. None of this would have happened if I’d just stayed home.
“I didn’t want to—if anything had happened to my dad—”
