We Drove Ninety Miles Before We Noticed Uncle Ray Was Gone

Nine of us went on a road trip in two vehicles: my parents, my aunt and uncle, and a rotating cast of cousins. At a gas station about two hours in, we all piled out, used the restroom, bought snacks, and shuffled seats the way big groups do, everyone assuming someone else was tracking everyone else.

We pulled back onto the highway, both cars, and drove. The mood was great. We sang. We ate. My aunt commented that it was unusually peaceful, and nobody thought about why.

Ninety miles later, my aunt's phone rang. It was Uncle Ray. He was still at the gas station. He had gone back inside for a coffee, and both cars had left without him. He had watched us drive away and had been sitting on the curb with his coffee for over an hour, too proud, he said, to chase the cars on foot.

The reason nobody missed him is that Uncle Ray is a quiet man, and each car assumed he was in the other one. My mother swore he was with my aunt. My aunt swore he was with my mother. He was with neither. He was ninety miles behind us, drinking his coffee, being very calm about it in the way that is somehow much worse than yelling.

We turned around. It added three hours to the trip. Uncle Ray got in the car, said nothing, and buckled his seat belt with great dignity. He has not let us forget it in the years since. Every single time we stop for gas now, the first thing anyone says, before anything else, is "count Ray."