Everything hinges on the answer.
I read the email again, searching for anything that offers me a hint, but there’s nothing. He’s written everything very plainly.
Just the facts, dry as dust.
The facts he’s decided to tell me anyway.
He didn’t even give me the goddamned professor’s name, did he? Just a brief note that he won’t compromise his colleague’s identity and risk any official involvement.
Things can be messy in that world once police or government investigators show up.
Don’t I know it.
If I was in his position, and if I was telling the truth, I’d stick to the same line. I can’t hold that against him.
It just doesn’t prove his innocence. The lack of detail, that’s a mark against him in the trust department.
I’m so lost in thought I don’t even hear small footsteps pattering into the room until I look up. Kit pauses at the threshold, staring at me.
“No Cleo?”
My chest tightens. I close my laptop.
“Hi, Dad,” I say with a sarcastic smile. “Good morning, Dad, how are you doing this fine day? Try again, hon.”
“I like Cleo.” She shrugs shyly, raiding the fridge for her usual morning OJ.
“I thought you liked me.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Idolike you. But you’re my dad.”
“Right, right. So glad we cleared that up.”
She sighs. “You know what I mean. I was hoping she’d give me a few pointers with the seashells. I wanna do some 3D art with them.”
I do know what she means.
They discussed it yesterday over dinner, but I don’t have the energy to hear how attached she is to Cleo, so I get started on breakfast.
Kit perches at the breakfast bar like the little fox she is, reading on her Kindle, her fingers flicking idly over the stickers she’s plastered on the back.
They’re mostly parks and museums we’ve visited over the last couple years. Acadia, Congaree down in South Carolina, Taliesin East in Wisconsin.
Clee would love that last one, Frank Lloyd Wright and all.
I grit my teeth, evicting the thought.
Dammit, this isourtime. Our routine and nothing else should muddle it.
Same one we’ve had since she was a kid. She still twirls her hair the way she did when she was half her age, too.
Damn. Sometimes it feels like I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, parenting a preteen. She’s grown up too fast and I don’t know how to handle it.
Clee, she’s a young woman herself. She’d have insights I never will as a dad pushing to the end of his thirties, dreading Kit’s teenage years like a man watching an approaching asteroid.
I finish cooking up a pile of cheesy eggs and sausage. Kit stands up to fetch our plates.
Just like every morning for the past few years, there’s a familiar rhythm here.
