A Map of Days (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #4)(85)

Emma’s words circled in my head. Part of me was grateful for what she’d said, but a bigger part of me wished she hadn’t said it at all. There had always been a small, quiet voice inside me that whispered, in dark moments, She loved him more. But I had always been able to shut it up, to drown it out. Now Emma had handed it a megaphone. And I would never be able admit it to her, because then she would know I had already been nurturing this little fear, that I was insecure, and that would only make the little voice louder. So I just squeezed her hand and kept driving.

Driving the cool car your grandfather owned, the little voice nagged. To go on a mission you inherited from him. To prove . . . what?

That I was as capable and necessary and deserving of respect as he had been.

I had said I didn’t want my grandfather’s life, and that was true enough. I wanted my own. But I wanted people to feel about me the way they did about him. Having named it, I could see how pathetic it was. But giving up and turning back now would be more pathetic still. The only choice, as I saw it, was to succeed at this so much that I broke the mold, won everybody’s respect, escaped my grandfather’s shadow once and for all, and got the girl—not an echo of the affection she’d felt for Abe, but every last bit of her.

It was a tall order. But at least this time the fate of all peculiardom didn’t hang in the balance. Just my relationship and my sense of self-worth.

Ha.

Then Enoch, who had, again, only been pretending to be asleep, said, “After you break up with Emma, can I ride up front? Bronwyn’s massive legs are crushing me.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Emma said. “Actual murder.”

Enoch sat forward. Put a hand to his heart, feigning shock. “Oh my God. You’re not going to do it, are you, Jacob?”

“Mind your own damn business,” I said.

“Grow a spine, man. The girl’s still in love with your grandfather.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma said loudly enough to wake up Bronwyn and Millard.

“Then who were you saying I love you to on the phone yesterday, if not Abe?”

“What?” I said, swiveling in my seat to look at Emma. “What phone?”

She was staring a hole through her lap.

“The one around the back of that filling station in 1965,” said Enoch. “Uh-oh! You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“That was a private conversation,” Emma muttered.

We were about to pass an exit, and I swung the car off the highway at the last possible moment.

“Whoa!” said Bronwyn. “Don’t kill us!”

I pulled off the side of the road, parked, got out, and walked away from the car without looking back. There was a freeway overpass nearby and I stalked into the shadows beneath it, shuffling through a tide of trash thrown from passing cars. It sounded like an ocean under there.

“I should’ve told you.” It was Emma, coming up behind me.

I kept walking. She followed.

“I’m sorry, Jacob. I’m sorry. I had to hear his voice one last time.”

She had talked to his past self, some long-ago looped version of him from the days when he was merely middle-aged.

“You don’t think I wish I could talk to him? Every day?”

“You know it’s not the same.”

“You’re right, it’s not. He was your boyfriend. You loved him. But that man raised me. He meant more to me than my own father. And I loved him more than you did.” I was shouting to be heard above the echoing roar of traffic. “So you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to make secret phone calls to past-Abe when I’ve been dying to talk to him again. You don’t get to tell me I don’t understand what it’s like to miss someone or to be angry he left you behind and kept secrets from you. Because I do know what that’s like.”

“Jacob, I—”

“And you don’t get to tell me you love me, and tell me we’re going to be together, and flirt with me and be cute and sweet and strong and amazing and all the wonderful things that you are and then be heartsick about him and tell him you love him behind my back!”

“I was saying goodbye. That’s all.”

“But you kept it a secret. That’s the worst part.”

“I was going to talk to you about it,” she said “but we’re always surrounded by other people.”

“How can I believe you?”

“I wanted to. I did. It was eating a hole in me. But I didn’t know how.”

“You just say it: I still love him! I can’t get him out of my mind! You’re just a pale imitation of him, but you’ll do in a pinch!”

Her eyes got wide. “No, no, no. Don’t say that. That’s not what you are at all. At all.”

“That’s how it feels. Isn’t that why you came along on this mission with me?”

“What,” she said, voice rising to a shout, “are you talking about?”

“Aren’t you just living out some old fantasy? Trying to make up for feeling left behind all those years? Here’s your chance to finally go on a mission with Abe—or the next best thing.”

“Now you’re not being fair!”

“Oh no?”