Two weeks.Two weeks of living with Jacob, being in his space, waking up beside him. We’ve stolen so many moments these pastfew days, and the idea of uninterrupted time with him, even if it comes with an end date, feels like a gift.
Fear still lingers, a shadow, out of sight in the corner of my mind, but I catch a glimpse of Jacob through the window, his mouth stretched in a wide smile as he puts the gas pump back in the holder and walks around the car to return to his seat.
“Ready?” he asks, still smiling, and I push that fear away, putting the car back in drive and pulling back onto the road.
24
We’ve been driving for a little over three hours now, the journey back so much smoother than the one to Skye. No sheep flooding the street, no traffic jams, no breakdowns.
We’ve stopped to stretch our legs and get some snacks, but otherwise we’ve talked the whole way.
Stories about his sisters, who, according to him, didn’t learn as much from the family cooking lessons as he did. But then, he’s the one who’s had the most practice making the dishes their parents taught them. He tells me how much Maggie helped after his parents passed, how the girls were finishing school and he was at university. He moved out of the dorms and back into the house, and Maggie helped. She cooked for them and looked out for the girls, but when they craved a taste of something familiar, something their parents had made, Jacob was the one to make it.
“They didn’t come back for the wedding?” I ask.
Jacob’s brows crease.
“For Maggie’s wedding?”
“Oh. No.”
He opens a bag of cheddar-and-onion crisps, passing one to me, his gaze averted.
“Are they not close?” I ask. “The girls and Maggie?”
It seems hard to believe, given everything he’s told me about Maggie’s presence in their lives. How important she’s been to all of them.
“They were busy,” Jacob said. “They’re both working, and it’s hard to take time off and…” He lifts a shoulder. “They don’t enjoy coming back to Aberdeen much, and I don’t…I don’t want to push them.” He pauses. “I think they have a lot of memories of our parents here. And of how things were after. They had to keep going to school as if nothing had happened, and they both struggled in their own way. Rachel became so distant, and Annie went hard the other way. She clung to Maggie, and to me. Never wanted to spend a single second alone. But by the time they were ready for university, they both wanted to get out of here, and now that they’re living away—I don’t know. It just seems like they don’t want to come back.”
I slant a look at him. “And do you feel—how do you feel about that?”
“I miss them, but we do call. And visit. And it’s not that I don’t understand where they’re coming from. Sometimes I feel that same way about Aberdeen. I’ll walk somewhere and pass the pub James would force me to do karaoke at, or the Indian restaurant my father loved, and it’s—” He swallows. “It’s overwhelming at times.”
“Have you never thought about moving? Like your sisters?”
He hesitates. “I have, but…Maggie’s there. And your dad, and I don’t know. I want to be close by just in case—” He stops mid-sentence, and my chest tightens.
“I get it,” I say.
It strikes me that he described that time after his parents’ deathas hard for his sisters, but he didn’t talk about how hard it was for him. And it must have been. In addition to all his own grief, he was taking care of his sisters, while still in college. I can’t even imagine.
“And I have work,” he says. “That keeps me here.”
“Right,” I say. He holds the open bag of crisps toward me, and I reach for one, popping it into my mouth. “So, you’ve told mewhyyou chose poetry, but you haven’t told me any of your favorite poems.”
He laughs. “That’s like asking me to pick my favorite child.”
“Okay,” I say. “A favorite poet, then?”
“Huh.” He thinks for a moment, his teeth pulling on his bottom lip. “I’m not sure that’s any easier. I love all the poets I teach. I think I mentioned some of them, but Meena Alexander in particular. She was also from Kerala, like my family, and she immigrated several times during her life. Her reflections on identity and migration and diaspora all resonate so deeply with me.
“But I also love the poets I studied as a child. And it’s hard to grow up here and not read a lot by Robert Burns.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “Maggie actually gave me a collection of his poems for my birthday once. I think when I was eleven or twelve. We’d studied him in school, and in the creative writing classes I took, but it was the first time I read poetry on my own. Simply for fun.
“I spent a good deal of my thesis examining his work, actually. He’s considered the national poet of Scotland, and my research was an exploration of Scottish identity and the arts. What it means for me to be from here, born here, to be both Indian and Scottish now.”
“I want to read that,” I say.
He glances at me. “Really?”
