I stepped inside the house and unclipped Bertie’s leash. He ran toward the kitchen, and I followed, a few steps behind, watching as he made a beeline for his water dish—B.W. painted on the side—and started slurping loudly. I tucked my hair behind my ears and pressed my lips together, hard and quick, the way Palmer’s sister Ivy had taught us when we were in eighth grade. I looked around, but there was no sign of Clark. And I knew that logically there was no reason for him to still be there.
Even so, I took my time as I hung up Bertie’s leash and double-checked he wasn’t tracking dirt all over the house. When I started to feel creepy about being in someone’s house when my job there was done, I gave Bertie a quick pat on the head, then headed out the door, making sure to lock it behind me.
Once I was walking to my car, I pulled out my phone again and looked down at the texts.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Hi—I was thinking we could get dinner tonight.
The Little Pepper? 7 p.m.
The Little Pepper had been an Asian fusion restaurant the three of us had gone to together a lot when I was younger, but it’d been closed for years now, torn down after a fire. It didn’t surprise me my dad didn’t know it was gone—I was honestly shocked he remembered we’d ever gone there. My dad never talked about our past, except in the campaign stories I’d heard him tell over and over again, until they were just well-polished anecdotes and not memories.
I got into my car and cranked the AC, still looking down at my phone.
ME
Little Pepper’s closed.
I hesitated, then typed again.
ME
But we can go to the Crane if you want. It’s pretty good.
I put my phone down and prepared to back out of Clark’s driveway—I didn’t want him to think it was weird that I was just sitting there, hanging out after I’d walked his dog. But a second later, it buzzed, and I picked it up.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Sounds good. Meet there? Or meet at home?
I stared at the last word he’d typed. I knew what he meant, of course. He meant the house we were both currently living in. But whenever I saw or heard that word, I always thought of the farmhouse first. Our house in Stanwich Woods was never the place that came to mind.
ME
I’ll meet you there.
• • •
I’d gotten a text when I was merging onto the highway, and so it wasn’t until I pulled into the Crane’s parking lot that I was able to look at it.
ALEXANDER WALKER
Stuck in traffic by East View. There in 15.
I looked at the words on my screen for a moment, trying to get them to them make sense, before I realized that the text had been sent twenty minutes ago, which meant I was probably late.
I hurried into the restaurant, feeling like everything was suddenly backward. I had gotten used to my dad being perpetually ten—or more—minutes late, to the point where I rarely showed up for things with him on time. I’d start getting texts from Peter, or some random intern, usually a minute before my dad would be there, and then get up-to-the-second information about where he was and what he was doing, like he was a plane whose progress needed to be monitored. So it was beyond strange to walk in and see my dad sitting at a table, waiting.
“Hi,” I said, sliding down into the seat across from him. “Uh—sorry. I thought you’d be late.”
“It’s fine,” my dad said, giving me a quick smile. “No problem.”
I reached over and took a sip from my water glass, noticing how strange it was that my dad’s BlackBerry wasn’t on the table with us—that, frankly, my dad was here at all, not jumping up to take calls or sending e-mails while I texted with my friends or played games on my phone.
“Something to drink?” the waitress asked, and when I saw who it was, I sank a little lower in my seat, holding up my menu to block my face. My friends and I had almost been kicked out of here by this same waitress—Wanda—when she and Toby got into an argument about the complimentary mint bowl and how many was considered a reasonable number to take. It had been a few months, though, so hopefully I was in the clear.
“Iced tea,” my dad said, and I piped up, “Diet Coke.”
I waited until I was sure she’d left before lowering my menu again. “You okay?” my dad asked, looking at me with his eyebrows raised.
“Fine,” I said immediately. “Just fine.” I opened my menu, then set it aside immediately, since I always ordered the same thing here. My dad set his menu aside as well, and we looked at each other in silence. I suddenly wished I’d pretended I needed more time with it, just to have a prop in front of me. “So,” I said, after we’d gotten our drinks and given our orders and I wasn’t sure I could stand the silence any longer, “um, how was your day?”
“Fine,” my dad said automatically. It seemed like that was all there was going to be to it, but after a moment he went on. “Yesterday was the last day I could have any communication with the office. The investigation started today, so I’m officially not working.”
“Oh,” I said, a little taken aback. I’d realized, in theory, that my dad would have to stop working when he took his leave of absence. But like all good theories, I’d never seen it put into practice. My dad worked all the time; it was just who he was. Even before he’d been a congressman, I used to hear stories about his public-defender days, sleeping on couches and eating vending-machine dinners, standing up for the people nobody else was going to defend. It looked like he was still working—he was wearing a suit and a collared shirt, but no tie, which was what he wore when he wanted to seem professional but not stuffy. “So,” I said, “um . . . what did you do?”
“I went to the library,” he said, “got some books I’d been wanting to read for, oh, the last decade or so. And then proceeded not to read any of them. Did you know that we have a channel that shows classic basketball games?”
I shook my head. “I did not.”
“Well . . . we do,” my dad said, giving me a slightly embarrassed smile. “I may have watched one from the eighties. One or four.”
I smiled at that. “Even though the outcome was decided years ago?”
“Ah,” my dad said as he unwrapped his chopsticks, separated them, and set them to the side of his silverware, “but there always seems like the possibility that something might change this time around.” Silence fell again, and I was about to take a breath and say something about the decor, or the size of the restaurant, when my dad asked, “So what about you?” He cleared his throat. “I mean . . . how was your day?”
“Oh,” I said, “well . . .” I knew I should probably tell him about my job; with Maya trusting me to work on my own, it seemed likely that I wasn’t going to get fired. But I didn’t want to see his expression when he heard what I was going to be spending the summer doing. I knew I’d have to tell him eventually, but not today, not when I’d just begun to feel like I was getting the hang of it. “It was fine,” I said, and without warning, my mind was suddenly back on the text he’d sent. “Um . . . you texted earlier that you were on East View?” My dad nodded. “Were you . . .” I took a breath and made myself ask it. “Were you at the old house?”
My dad looked up at me, his brow creasing. “The farmhouse?” he asked, like we had so many other old houses, he needed to clarify. I nodded, not even sure what I wanted his answer to be. There was a piece of me that wanted him to say that he’d been over there. That maybe he went all the time when he was back, and since I had never asked him, I never knew. It would be some kind of proof, at least, that he thought about my mother occasionally, that he remembered the life we’d all had there together.
My dad sat back in his chair, and it was like something crossed his face briefly before his normal expression returned again. “There was traffic on the Merritt, so I got off at the exit by East Loop and drove over here from there,” he said, then shook his head, like he was still trying to understand me. “Why would I go to the farmhouse?”