Evan
CJ
CJ
I know. I’m looking at it.
Are you okay?
Evan didn’t answer. CJ tried to call him, and Evan sent him to voicemail. CJ looked at the photo again and cursed. The man had been there when they walked in, and he’d been there whenthey left, and CJ hadn’t given him a single thought while they were there or since. But he thought about it now, and if he hadn’t been so filled with rage, he might have been impressed by the specific kind of patience it would take to know who you’re looking for and then just…wait.
He stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then his phone rang. The screen saidMOM. He stared at it for one full ring. Then another. Dread coiled in his gut and he cursed before he answered.
“Hey.” He stood so he could pace.
“I just saw something on your father’s phone.” His mother’s voice was pitched high. “I just saw…is it you?”
CJ closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah.”
“Christopher.”
His mother’s voice was measured in the way it got when she was managing herself very carefully. He’d seen and heard versions of it his entire life: the restraint of a woman who had raised him with a preference for composure over confrontation. A restraint she was currently exercising under immense pressure.
“Mom—”
“I’m not asking you to explain yourself over the phone.” Her voice was tinged with something that sounded like disappointment. “I just want to know that you’re all right.”
He leaned against the counter in his kitchen. “I’m all right.”
There was a pause, and he could hear the television in his parents’ living room. “Your father wants to talk to you.”
“Mom—”
“CJ.” Her voice dropped slightly, composure slipping just a fraction. “Please just talk to him.”
She didn’t give him a chance to respond before his father’s voice came on, quieter than his mother’s but more direct.
“CJ.”
“Hi, Dad.”
“You want to tell me what I’m looking at?”
It wasn’t quite a question, but CJ had grown up understanding that this particular way of asking meant he already knew the answer. He just wanted to see if his son would be straight with him.
Or not so straight.
“It’s a photo from a restaurant,” CJ said. “It’s in a small mountain town near a cabin I rented so I—wecould get away. There was a guy at the counter with a newspaper he was clearly using as a prop.”
“I can see that,” his father said, and CJ swore there was a tinge of amusement in his tone. “You want to tell me who and what it’s a photo of?”
CJ closed his eyes briefly. “Evan and me. Eating lunch.”
“Christopher.”
“Father.” He sighed. “You know who Evan is, Dad.”
“I know who he is.” Another pause, and CJ could picture his dad pacing the living room, just like he was. “I watched you two play together for three years. I saw how close you were in college, and I saw how you two used to look at each other, and I never said anything because I didn’t want to assume something that wasn’t actually there.” His father’s voice was careful in a way CJ had never heard before. “I think…I think maybe I’d been watching something thatwasthere and telling myself it wasn’t becausemyson would have told me something like this.”
