Page 41 of Nine Lives

“No, Dad,” Jessica had said. “I was just curious if you knew him. He’s someone you would have known many years ago.”

Another pause. Then, he said, “I keep wondering where I left my car.”

That had been the last thing he’d said before Jessica quickly told him she’d call him back. She didn’t really need to; he wouldn’t remember the phone conversation. But because she’d said she would, she called him anyway.

“Hi, Dad, it’s Jessica calling you back. Your daughter.”

“I know you’re my daughter.”

“I just thought I’d say a proper goodbye since we got cut off abruptly before.”

“That’s a good thing,” he said, and he sounded as though he had a little cold.

“What’s a good thing?”

“A proper goodbye! No one really says them anymore.”

She laughed. “No, they don’t, do they? Okay, Dad, I’m off. I love you.”

“Were you the one asking me about little Artie Kruse?”

Jessica, who’d still been sitting on the chair in her bedroom, stood up. “Yeah, that was me.”

“He was a little fascist, that much I know.”

“When did you know him, Dad?”

“Well, I don’t know how well I really knew him ever, but I stayed at his parents’ house up at Squam Lake one summer.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard that.”

“And I wanted him to talk about it, to talk about what we’d done. But he wouldn’t. He pretended it had never happened.”

“He pretended what never happened?”

“What we’d done. When we were kids.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jessica said, keeping her voice gentle. Her father was starting to sound agitated, the way he got when some memory was just out of reach. “Why do you think he didn’t want to talk about it?”

“Because he didn’t want to think about it, that’s why? That’s why people don’t want to talk about things, usually.”

“I agree. But you didn’t want to forget, Dad. You must have wanted to remember because you wanted to talk about it with him.”

“What are we talking about again, Rose?”

Rose was Jessica’s mother’s name, but she ignored the slipup. She knew her dad was about to lose the thread, so she said, “We’re talking about Art Kruse, little Artie Kruse you called him, and what he didn’t want to talk about.”

There was a long silence, and Jessica knew that she’d lost him. When he spoke again, he said, “Am I supposed to know him?”

“No, I don’t suppose so, Dad,” she said. “It must be close to your dinnertime there.”

“Probably macaroni and cheese again.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No, I guess not.”

“All right, Dad, I love you, and I’m going to hang up now.”

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