That Old Cape Magic

difference in their ages, he wasn’t sure he was entitled to this opinion.
    “Wait a few years,” Griffin told him, unlatching his seat belt and getting out.
    The other vehicle was a late-model BMW. The boy had also been backing out. Griffin identified the parking space he’d just vacated, saw in his mind’s eye the perfect arc in space and time that had resulted in their violent meeting, each blind to the other’s existence until the instant of collision. Both trunks had sprung and were standing up at perfect right angles. Griffin tried to close his, but the lock mechanism wasn’t properly aligned anymore, and it popped right up again. Both sets of taillights were smashed, both bumpers crumpled. It was the kind of wreck that would’ve cost his father a few hundred bucks to repair, but today would run into thousands. Otherwise, the vehicles looked drivable. “I guess we should exchange insurance information,” he said.
    At this the boy visibly wilted, as if the necessity were tantamount to admitting that, yes, they’d just had an accident, something he still hoped might be avoided.
    Griffin got a pen and a piece of paper from the car and handed them to him.
    The boy said, “Couldn’t we just…,” then lapsed into silence.
    The cops would have to be called, of course, but when Griffin went back to the car he saw that the cup holder where his cell had been sitting was now empty. He finally located the phone on the floor under the rear seat. Its screen was black, and when he pressed the space bar it stayed black. He pressed several other keys and was about to give up when the screen suddenly leapt to life with a message: CALLING JOY. Before he could hit the button to disconnect, he heard his wife answer, her voice sounding tinny and far away.
    “Joy,” he said. He was about to explain that he hadn’t meant to call when he realized that this might just be the moment of gracehe’d been waiting for yesterday and had given up on. “Is this a bad time?”
    “I’m in the car,” she admitted. “I’m surprised to hear your voice. I guess I thought you’d be halfway back to L.A.”
    He decided on a jaunty tone. “No, I’m on the Cape. I called to tell you it’s official. I’ve become my father. I just backed my rental car into a brand-new BMW. We scattered his ashes yesterday, and I think this might be his way of telling me I won’t be rid of him so easily.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he realized just how forced the jauntiness must have sounded. “We did Mom, too,” he continued more seriously. “Near Chatham. Her favorite part of the Cape.”
    “Are you okay? Was anyone injured?”
    “No.” To both questions.
    Silence again.
So why tell me about it?
was what she must have been thinking.
    “And here’s the really weird part,” he said, unsure whether he was just talking to keep her on the line or, in some roundabout fashion, finally coming to the point. “Since yesterday, maybe for a while before that, I’ve been wondering…” He stopped here, unsure how to continue, though what he’d been wondering couldn’t have been simpler. “I’ve been wondering if maybe I loved them. It’s crazy, I know, but… do you think that’s possible?”
    “Oh, Jack,” Joy said, as if she would’ve liked to ask where in the world he’d done his graduate work. “Of course you did. What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you?”
    In the rearview mirror Griffin could see the boy, pen in hand, staring blankly at the piece of paper, as if he’d forgotten his very identity.
    “Jack?”
    “I’m here,” he told her, then, a moment later, heard himself ask, “Is there anything left, Joy, or did I kill it all?”
    She didn’t answer immediately, and he understood that thelong, painful beat of silence was what he’d been dreading far more than the final verdict. “You came close,” she finally admitted, sniffling. “But no. You killed only the part that could be killed.”
    They talked for another minute or two, though only about logistics. She offered to drive down to Falmouth, but he told her that wouldn’t be necessary. In a town this size he shouldn’t have any trouble finding a bungee cord to secure the trunk, his father’s time-honored solution and good enough for now. It’d probably take him an hour or so with the cops, after which, if the car was drivable, he’d be back on the road. They left it that they’d meet just over the Sagamore. They could have some lunch