“What? Oh. No, that’s not it.”
“Okay.” More clicking. Pages rustled.
“It’s just—” He faltered, feeling supremely ridiculous. “Could you tell me what time it is?”
He was met with silence. Then, “It’s two in the morning.”
“I mean, specifically. To the minute.”
Another pause. “It’s quarter after.”
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“Thanks.” He leaned his head back against the cabinet, some of the tension bleeding out of him. On the other end, Lane had resumed typing. He listened to her work for a while without speaking. Outside the kitchen, the foyer was black as a void. “What are you working on?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Defensive,” he noted.
“You’re not the only one with secrets.” A pause followed, and she added, “This is going on my checklist, you know.”
“You have a checklist?”
“I do. I call it ‘reasons Colton Price probably keeps teeth in a kitchen drawer.’?”
“Sounds unsanitary.” A smile crept across his face, unbidden. “I’m not allowed to call you in the middle of the night to ask the time?”
“It’s got a real Wes Craven feel,” she said. “I’m waiting for you to tell me to look out my window.”
“Your window?” He kicked out a leg. The bottom of his foot sat flush against the cabinet in front of him. “What’s outside your window?”
“You, obviously. Probably with a hunting knife.”
Knife aside, he wished that were true. He wished he were anywhere but here, in this empty mausoleum. A secondhand son in a throwaway home. He wished he were on campus, hand in hand outside her dormitory, the way they’d been the night he walked her home. He wished he could see what she was doing, how she was sitting—if she was at her desk or tucked up in her bed. If she worked by the overhead lights or beneath a tabletop lamp. If she was a pajama-set person or a recycled-T-shirt person.
“It was romantic when Romeo did it,” he said.
Another pause. Then, “Romeo and Juliet died.”
“Point taken.” He wanted to ask her the time again, but he was awake enough now to realize how strange that would seem. How irrational. “I think it’s nice, what you’re doing,” he said. “Going out to Chicago to see Schiller. It’s a terrible idea, but it’s nice. Not a lot of people would.”
Quiet ensued. Then, softly, she said, “I know what it’s like to wake up in a hospital bed and find out your entire life has been turned upside down while you were under. No one should have to go through that alone.”
He shut his eyes and didn’t respond. For the next several minutes, he sat with the phone tucked into his shoulder and listened to her work.
“Price,” he heard her say, not for the first time. “Colton.Are you sleeping?”
“No,” he said after a beat. “No, I’m still here.”
“We have to be at the airport first thing in the morning. I should try and get at least a little sleep.”
“Wait.” His heart rioted against his ribs. He thought of slamming his hands on the wrong side of the ice. The cold knifing his bones. His brother with arms gone slack, slowly sinking out of sight. “Wednesday, wait a second. Stay and talk to me.”
For a heartbeat, he thought it was too late. He thought she’d gone. But then he heard the sharp intake of her breath on the other line.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll stay. But not for free.”
