Copilot

I tell my son I love him every day. At breakfast. At the school gate. At bedtime. The words fall out easy, like coins through a torn pocket. He catches them without checking.

My father is sixty-nine. He’s never said it. Not once. The anger has calcified.

Last Sunday, he drove us to the village. My mother in the back, my son asleep between pillows. I watched his hands on the wheel. Liver spots I don’t remember. A hesitation at the roundabout that made the car behind us honk. He used to drive fast, certain, one hand on the wheel and the other gesturing at something out the window—a ruined chapel, an irrigation channel, a name I’d forget. Now he drives like the road might shift beneath him.

My feet kept searching for a brake I didn’t have.

A month ago, he stopped driving at night. Not gradually—just stopped. My eyes, he said, and that was all. Last Sunday, before we left, he asked if I wanted to drive. I said no. Migraine. It wasn’t. I wanted him to still be the one who knows the way.

When he’s not driving, he can’t stop talking. The silence of the passenger seat terrifies him—he fills it with stories I’ve heard, warnings I don’t need, questions he answers himself.

My son asked why el iaio drives so slow. “He’s being careful,” I said. My father said nothing.

I used to sit where my son sits. My grandfather sat where my father sits now. He’s dead. The seat moves forward.

The car ahead braked. My father braked late. My foot pressed the floor. My son didn’t wake.