“But you never sit with us on a plane. How do you know?”
“I don’t sit with you because Mom—” Dad swallowed a sob.
Can’t fool me. I’ve been disguising vocal sounds for years.
“I don’t sit with you because your mother insists I don’t. She can focus better on you that way. She knows I don’t like to fly, either.”
“But you fly all the time for work.”
“It’s part of my job, Harry. Failure isn’t an option.”
For a moment, Harry had almost believed they were having a father-son confidence. But Dad was wrong. Failure was always an option, because the knowledge that you couldn’t win every time gave you the courage to try. Effort should always be enough to earn gold stars. Ask anyone with a shitload of defective brain wiring.
Dad fumbled in his pocket, took out his car keys, dropped them, picked them up. His hand shook. “Can you do this, Hazza—come to the hospital?”
There it was again, Hazza. A name once spoken with affection.
“Yes,” Harry said, leading the way to the car.
He would force himself to go to the hospital for Mom—the ultimate exposure to his phobia; she would be so proud. But he would also do this with the hope—a hope he’d never been able to ditch—that one day Dad would be proud of him, too. For something other than fucking SAT scores.
FOUR
Felix pulled onto the freeway off-ramp and headed into Raleigh. Navigating narrow London streets might be a nail-biting exercise, but these grid-planned divided highways with rows of town houses and interchangeable strip malls were so contrived. So falsely happy. He and Harry could have been skirting the center of any city in America—trapped in a suburban prison with Ella beyond the razor wire.
He needed to meet with the cardiologist, investigate the man’s credentials, start the process of transferring Ella to Duke. Or Memorial in Chapel Hill. Or he could look into taking her back to England, to Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. Wasn’t that the best of the best? And phone calls—there were phone calls to be made: to Mother; Ella’s father; Katherine, who always looked at him sideways as if to say, I know more about your marriage than you do. And Robert; he should call his partner and say, what—I need a day off? He never took a day off. And what about Harry’s school?
“Could you slow down, Dad? I’m feeling carsick.”
“I thought you outgrew that when you hit double digits.”
“So did I,” Harry said.
Felix eased his foot off the accelerator, and the needle dipped from sixty miles per hour to forty-five. The last thing he needed was vomit inside his clean car. Or a speeding ticket. His right leg began to shake, making it almost impossible to keep pressure on the pedal. Should he be driving? Probably not. He glanced around. Where in God’s name were they? Had he taken the wrong exit? He knew how to get to Raleigh Regional. How could he be so incompetent? How could he fail his wife so abominably?
“You do know where we’re going, right?” Harry said.
Be quiet, Harry. I need to think.
“Want me to figure it out?”
“No.” How had he managed to screw this up and get them lost?
Harry was messing with his phone. “I see what you did.” He bounced in his seat—kinetic energy barely contained by a seat belt. “Easy to fix. Turn right here. Here, Dad. Here!”
“I’m turning round, Harry.”
“No, you don’t have to. We’re so close. Look!”
Harry waved his phone in front of Felix.
“Harry, I’m driving.”
“But we’re super close and we can be there in like two minutes. It’s a shortcut!”
“I don’t want to take a shortcut, Harry. I want to turn round and put us back on the road we’re meant to be on.”