Fifteen minutes later, he was huffing. They were walking up the hill Blair’s house was on. She was busting it, and there was nary a drop of sweat on her brow even though she was still wearing the puffer vest. Edward was trotting next to her as if he did this every day, which Jack supposed he did. Edward was fitter than he looked.
Edward was fitter than Jack.
When he got home, he needed to add some cardio to his fitness regimen.
He realized with a start that his back hurt significantly less than it had yesterday. Experimentally, he rotated his torso from side to side as he walked. Stiff, but no pain.
Blair glanced at him but didn’t say anything. Surprisingly, she hadn’t spoken since they’d set out. He’d classified Blair as the sort who never shut up, and earlier that morning, as she’d told him about naming various members of her household, she had hewn to type. But here she was, suddenly, blessedly mute. Also surprising: the silence between them wasn’t awkward. In his experience, at events and signings, the most talkative people were the ones who got weird when silence descended.
What would a person not in a cocoon do at this moment? Listen, probably. He could hear the wind, and the background humming of some sort of insect. It reminded him of summer at his dad’s place, on the lake, even though the landscape was different.
His phone rang. He glanced down. “Shit.” If he’d been writing this scene, he would have rejected it for being too pat.Man thinks about father; father calls.
He could decline the call. Dad wouldn’t leave a message. He didn’t do voicemail. Or email. He just expected people to answer his calls, and Jack suspected they generally did.
“Sorry, I have to get this.” He hadn’t spoken to his father since before the leak.
Blair made a gesture of agreement and kept marching.
“Hi, Dad.”
“How’s the book?”
You tell me.
It was possible that his father hadn’t heard about the leak. He read newspapers, but physical ones. The local paper that got delivered to his cabin wasn’t covering literary espionage, andThe New York Times, whichhadwritten about the leak, Dad purchased on trips into town.
He might not have made one of those lately, since he was working on a book of his own. Arthur Branksome definitely embraced the cocoon method.
“The book is fine,” Jack said carefully.
“Did I interrupt a writing session?”
“No.”You interrupted a walk with a beagle named after a fictional teen vampire.“I’m getting some air.”In Los Angeles.
“Well, isn’t that hardy of you. I heard on the radio that it’s five degrees in the Cities.”
That was unusually cold for late October, even for Minnesota. But it wouldn’t be as cold as—
“Of course, it’s negative two up here.”
“Mm.” Dad always won the I-suffer-but-I’m-hardy contest he perpetually seemed to be having. “Have you been out on the lake?”
“Caught a few perch yesterday. At this rate, the ice fishing season will start before Christmas.”
Jack couldn’t think of anything else to say. He and his dad didn’t have a history of talking on the phone. It wasn’t lost on him that his dad had only started calling onceIn Timecame out and began earning rave reviews. Before that, phone calls had generally been focused on the logistics of their rare visits. Nowadays, his dad’s callsseemed focused on making sure Jack didn’t miss his new deadline. In fact, it was odd that he hadn’t opened with that.
“Going to make your deadline?”
There it was.
“Yes,” Jack said, wondering if it was a lie. The more time elapsed, the closer to a lie it became. “Dad, I should go.”
He chuckled. “Head all clear?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.”
