“It may be a legitimate emergency. What if one of them is sick?” He began to rise from his seat. The only phone was in the den.
Marni clutched his wrist, her eyes filled with trepidation. “Let it ring,” she begged.
“They’ll only keep trying. I won’t have the weekend spoiled. If we let it ring, we’ll keep wondering. But if we answer it, at least we’ll know one way or another.”
“The weekend will be spoiled anyway…. Web!”
He was on his way toward the den. She ran after him.
He lifted the receiver and spoke calmly. “Hello?”
A slightly gruff voice came from the other end of the line. “Marni Lange, please.”
“Who’s calling?”
“… Her father.”
As if Web hadn’t known. He would have recognized that voice in any timbre. He’d last heard it when he’d been lying, distraught, in a hospital room.
“Mr. Lange—” Web began, not knowing what he was going to say, only knowing that he wanted to deflect from Marni the brunt of what was very obviously anger. He was curtly interrupted.
“My daughter, please.”
Marni was at Web’s elbow, trying to take the phone from him, but he resisted. “If this is something that concerns—”
“I’d like tospeak to my daughter!”
Hearing her father’s shout, Marni tugged harder on the phone. “Web, please …”
He held up his free hand to her, even as he spoke calmly into the receiver. “If you’re angry, Mr. Lange, you’re angry at me. Perhaps you ought to tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Are you going to put my daughter on the line?”
“Not yet.”
Jonathan Lange hung up the phone.
Web heard the definitive click and took the phone from his ear, whereupon Marni snatched it to hers. “Dad? Hello? Dad?” She scowled at the receiver, then slammed it down. “Damn it, Web. You should have let me talk! What good does it do if he’s hung up? Now nothing’s accomplished!”
“Something is. Your father knows that I have no intention of letting you face this alone. You faced it alone fourteen years ago. I like to think I’m more of a man now.”
“Then it’s a macho thing?” she cried. “You’re trying to show him who wears the pants around here?”
“Don’t be absurd, Marni! Our relationship has been one of equals from the start. I simply want your father to know that we’re standing together, that if he thinks he can browbeat you, he’ll be browbeating both of us. And I don’t take to being browbeaten.”
“Then you’ll shut every door as soon as it’s opened. Hecalled. Youwere the one who insisted on answering the phone. Now you’ve hung up on him—”
“He hung up on me!”
“Same difference—”
“No, it’s not,” Web argued angrily.“Heshut the door. I was perfectly willing to talk.”
“But he wouldn’t talk with you, so now he’s not talking with either of us.”
“He’ll call back. If he went to the effort of getting this number, he won’t give up so easily.”
“Then I’ll answer it next time.”
