A marshal named Petrowski gave them to me over the phone in a flat Midwestern voice that laid it out like a form he'd read a thousand times: fifteen minutes, monitored and recorded, and if the talk goes anywhere it's not supposed to, he ends it with no warning.
No locations. Nothing specific about anybody's situation. Family contact. I get to talk to my father the way a man talks to his father and not one inch past it.
Amara sets the phone on the desk on speaker, steps back against the wall, folds her arms, and stays. She's not going to leave and I don't ask her to.
It rings twice.
"Finn." My father's voice, older than the last one, thinner through the wire. "Son."
Ten years, and my throat shuts on nothing.
"Hey, Dad."
"They told me you called. I about didn't believe them." A breath. "You okay? You in trouble?"
"I'm okay."
"You don't sound okay."
"I'm okay, Dad." I flatten my hands on Amara's desk. "I’m somewhere good. I've got people. People who actually give a shit about me."
The line holds, and I can hear him work out what it means, that his boy who's had nobody for a decade is calling to tell him he's got people.
"Good." His breath goes ragged for a second and comes back. "That's good, Finn. That's real good."
Neither of us says anything and the recording runs, and Petrowski's out there somewhere with headphones on.
I've burned two minutes out of fifteen and I don't know how to do this.
So I go sideways.
"I've been thinking about home," I say.
"Yeah?"
"The old crowd. The guys who used to—" I pick the words up like they're hot off a stove. "The guys who used to go out to that place in the county. Weekends. You remember?"
The line goes silent.
Not phone-silent. My father's got a specific way of not talking and I've known it my whole life, and this is that—the sound of a man who heard every word I didn't say and is holding very still around it.
"Finn." Careful. "That's a long time ago."
"I know."
"That's not something I can—" He stops. Comes at it again. "There's a man on this line, son."
"I know there is."
"Then you know what I can and can't say."
"I know." My fingers dig into the desk. "I'm not asking you to say anything. I'm asking if you remember."
The silence comes back, and inside it I can hear him decide.
"I remember," he says.
Two words.
