Page 28 of Take the Fall
He said nothing to that. Which was the answer I expected and the answer I had come to extract.
“And the division,” I said. “I want your word.”
“I haven’t touched anyone at your division.”
NotI won’t. NotI give you my word.I haven’t.
Present tense. The exact tense a man uses when he means to answer a different question than the one asked.
“If something happens,” I said. “To anyone connected to my case. Anything. A bad review, a file pulled, a call from a number they don’t recognize. I will know it came from here. And I will stop being someone who comes to meetings.”
He looked at me for three long seconds.
“You know this isn’t over,” he said. “It never will be. Not until you come back to us a Branford and take your rightful place.”
I didn’t answer him. Answering meant staying, and staying was the last thing he had over me. So I left. Down the stairs, through the lobby, out the heavy door.
The cold hit. I stood on the sidewalk a second while the city moved around me.
He’d had the last word. He always did. For the first time in my life I didn’t need it back.
Under all of it, where he’d been all morning, was Luke.
My father had a friend in the police. No name, no face. He hadn’t needed to give me more. The line I’d kept between the badge and the name had never been that solid. Same small world. Same old men at the same tables. I’d just been the last to know it.
He hadn’t even used the man against me. All he’d asked was one cold thing: don’t catch the boy when he falls. He didn’t want me ruined. He wanted me home, done, and finally as small as he’d always said I was.
Then the next thought hit. My stomach dropped.
He’d told me he hadn’t touched anyone at my division. Present tense, deliberate. I’d heard it and let it go. Standing on the pavement, I couldn’t let it go anymore. He had reach. It didn’t stop where he aimed it.
Luke was at the station right now. If my father ever put a face to what he’d watched me protect across that table... One word at the right dinner. A bad review. A transfer out east that quietly ends a man. I’d gone in there to protect my division, and only now, on the sidewalk in the cold, did I understand who I’d actually been asking him not to touch.
Not the division. Him.
I’d never felt that before. Scared for something that wasn’t mine yet. It hit harder than the file, harder than anything my father had spent two hours laying out, and breathing didn’t help.
Luke was half of why I’d said no. The other half was the fear I’d carried in and left there. The quiet thing that said my father had me right. He’d given me the answer without knowing it. A man who thinks his son can’t swim doesn’t bother making sure nobody throws him a line.
I put my arm out. A cab came.
I got in and gave the Cabbagetown address before the driver asked. The bad stair on the landing. The slow kettle. The chair across from his that had started to feel like mine. My father wanted me home a Branford. He could keep the name.
Mine was at the other end of this ride. So was the man I’d decided I’d do anything to keep beyond his reach.
Chapter 10: That’s Not a No
Luke
Carlson stood at the cooker with his back to me, sleeves shoved to the elbow, working a wooden spoon through whatever was in the pot. He didn’t turn when the apartment door closed behind me.
“You’re early,” he said. “Or I’ve lost an hour. Tell me which.”
“Quarter past six.”
“Then I’ve lost an hour.” He tipped the pan and frowned into it. “Don’t make the face.”
“I’m not making a face.”
