Cassie, who’s been lingering near the door, finally steps up next to us. “Can we go find Jasper now?” she asks, sounding impatient. “I really need to talk to him.”
She’s not going to confess her affair in the middle of this mess, is she? It was one thing to tell me, but telling Jasper is another thing entirely. “Maybe you should wait until we’re home before you talk to Jasper?”
“That’s okay,” Quentin says, oblivious. “Come on, we can go in back and find him.”
Just then a short, older man with a ring of curly gray hair comes out from the back. He’s wearing khakis and a burgundy cable-knit sweater that hugs a big, very round belly. Dr. Simons. All the pictures I’ve seen are pretty old, but that belly and the ring of hair haven’t changed a bit.
“Dr. Simons, this is Wylie,” Quentin says, presenting me like a gift.
“Wylie!” Dr. Simons calls, his face lighting up as he makes his way over. “My goodness, your father said you were tall, but you’re taller than me!”
My dad loves to talk about my height even though I’m only a little taller than average. Probably because me growing normally is the one thing he can safely report that makes it sound like I’m thriving.
Dr. Simons’s handshake is warm and firm. “Please have a seat.” He motions to a nearby table. “I apologize for all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Your dad and I have been doing our best to manage this, well”—he takes a breath and looks toward the door—“fundamentally unmanageable situation.”
“Is Jasper back in the office?” Quentin asks. “Cassie was hoping to see him.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Dr. Simons says after hesitating for a second, like he’s not exactly sure where he left Jasper. It makes me wonder if he might be a little senile like Miriam. “Adam is showing him the testing material.”
“Come on, I’ll bring you,” Quentin says to Cassie.
Cassie looks back at me, her eyes watery and worried. “Unless you want me to stay, Wylie. I can if you want me to.”
“No, that’s okay. You can go,” I say, even though I would really like for her to stay. For my sake, and for hers. Jasper isn’t going to react well to finding out he was right about the other guy. “But think about waiting to tell him if you can. The truth will still be there when we get home.”
“Okay,” Cassie says, tears making her eyes shine as she reaches forward to squeeze my hand. “I’ll think about it.”
But I can already see her chewing on her lower lip as she heads toward the back. She’s not going to listen to a word I said.
“I just spoke with your father. He is still some distance away,” Dr. Simons says, sitting down as he peers hard at his watch. If he is trying to hide that he’s concerned, he’s failing. When I look up at the clock on the wall, it’s past three thirty a.m. I’m afraid to ask what time was he supposed to be here. “He’s had to take a slightly more circuitous route for obvious reasons.”
“No, not obvious,” I say, taking a seat at the long table across from him. “Listen, I’m not trying to be rude, but nothing about this is obvious to me.”
“No, of course not. You can call him if you’d like,” Dr. Simons says, looking around like he’s searching for a phone. “You should have a signal in here. It’s boosted. You should know he feels terrible for lying to you when Karen was there. The timing of this—it caught him very much off guard. And then for his later texts, he was genuinely trying to be sure that you didn’t get mixed up in this.”
“So he pretended to be Cassie texting me she was afraid someone was going to kill her?”
“In your father’s defense, he wasn’t responsible for that specific message; I was.” Dr. Simons takes a deep breath and rubs his forehead. “I realize now that it was unnecessarily frightening. But at the time, you were en route and we needed to get you here—and out of harm’s way—quickly. I could have done so another way; that’s clear to me now. You should ask your father about it. When he heard about that message, he wasn’t at all happy.”
When I pull out my phone, there is a signal and already a new text from my dad.
I’m sorry, it reads. For everything.
And I feel my stupid heart catch. Is it possible I won’t hate my dad forever? I guess I’m hoping it is. More than I realized.
Where are you? I write back instead of calling. I’m afraid if I actually talk to him, he’ll make me furious all over again. That he’ll somehow topple all the excuses that Dr. Simons has been so carefully building in his defense. How long is it going to take you to get here?
Still a couple hours, comes the quick response. I had to pull off for a bit. I promise, I will explain everything when I get there. But you can ask Dr. Simons anything. You can trust him. More soon. I’m so glad you’re okay. I love you, Scat. xo Dad.