It’s not just Paul. It’s what did that man actually see, that’s the question. Sad part is, I know the answer. I was just hoping for a different one, for a few more seconds added into that scene that gave us time to make space between us before it was seen. Because that’s the thing, we wereseen.
I’m startled when I see someone in my periphery. Nerves make me think it’s that man with a cop. Or a few of his friends…
But it’s just my landlord, Randy, approaching, wiping his greasy hands on a rag. My shoulders feel lighter.
“Hey, Holdren,” he says, “phone call.”
Then heavier. I stare at him. “What?”
“Telephone call.”
I keep staring and he gives me a look, nods to his office.
I don’t get phone calls here. My clients usually stop by, and I always know when. It’s sort of been my policy. No surprises.
It takes me a second to move. I put out my cigarette and follow him inside. I pick up the receiver from a pile of papers with coffee cup stains.
“Hello,” I say.
A male voice says: “Asher.”
My stomach turns inside out. My heart starts to race; it races backward, back into a time I thought I killed and buried.
“Asher?” That voice…deeper than I remember—a mix of my father’s and of Jimmy’s—but it’s…
“Yes?” I say.
“It’s me,” the voice says.
Glen was fourteen when I left home. His voice was still prepubescent, his limbs awkward and spindly. A boy. The voice I hear is deep and rich. The tones and heft of a man.
I look over at Randy sliding under a Cadillac, and I shut the office door. I rub at an ache in my head just beginning. “How did you find me?”
“I know a fella that knows a fella that knows a fella. Said they saw you riding through town.” Glen pauses for a second, clears his throat. “I put two-and-two together. Figured you’d be doing something with cars. Since you always liked them.” He adds the last part like an apology.
I try to think of how many places he could’ve called before he found me. It could’ve taken him days.
Before I can ask, he drops it on me like a boulder. “Dad’s gone.”
My racing heart slams into a wall. I press a hand to my chest as if to pull it back.
Glen says, “He passed the other night. Funeral is on Sunday.”
It’s not like I didn’t think my father would never die. Or my mother. Or even Glen. It’s just that I thought it would be something I’d never know. Something that would happen in the fading background of my past, a thing I could never really know for sure, but guess to be true.
And something I could always assure myself was not my fault.
“I just wanted to tell you,” he says. “Just…so you’d know.”
Already, I feel that weight on me. The heft of what I have to say next.
“I’ll be there,” I say. “I’ll leave tonight.”
A pause. “It’ll be good to see you, then.”
I hang up the phone. I stand there for a minute, not feeling anything other than my own blood pulsing through my veins.
I make for the door.
