Page 16 of Across His Line

I take my family’s calls in the car.

Not in the room. Not walking across the quad with my phone against my ear like every other idiot on this campus who wants people to see that somebody loves them. Not anywhere Kennebeck can hear, or his girlfriend, or the guy across the hall who plays the same four songs on a loop and thinks the walls are thicker than they are.

The car’s in the lot behind Corvin, last spot in the row, under the light, where I always leave it. Black. My father picked the color. He picked the car, too, the summer before I came here, and had it delivered to the house with a bow on the hood like we’re the kind of people who do bows. My mother took a picture of me standing next to it. I’ve never seen it posted anywhere.

When the door shuts, the campus goes away. That’s the only part I care about. The glass is thick, and the seats warm up, and everything outside goes flat and far.

I have practice in an hour.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How are you? How’s school?”

“Fine.”

She laughs a little, the laugh she uses at dinners when someone tells a joke that isn’t funny. She asks about classes. She asks about the weather, which she can look up.

“Your father wanted me to tell you—”

“He has my number.”

“He’s very busy, Rafferty.”

“So am I.”

“He was disappointed you didn’t call on Sunday.”

“He could’ve called me.”

I let the silence sit. I’ve got nowhere to be for an hour.

Nobody in my house calls anybody. You get summoned. Everything goes through my mom, like she’s a switchboard, and she passes it along in a voice that makes it sound like a suggestion, so that if you push back, you’re the one who started something. My dad has never once in my life asked me anything directly that he could have someone else ask for him.

“He’d like you home next weekend,” she says.

“I have hockey next weekend.”

“He knows.”

He knows means it’s been decided, and the hockey’s been accounted for. It was never going to be a question.

Somewhere behind her, a door closes. Then a man’s voice. I’ve been hearing that voice through walls my whole life. I’d know it from the bottom of a pool.

“Is he there?” I ask.

“He’s in the city until Sunday.”

The voice again. Closer.

“Don’t do that,” I say.

“Do what?”

“Lie to me.”

“Nobody is lying, Rafferty.”