Page 121 of Final Drive

I hang up and sit on the end of a hotel bed and think about my father’s face on a firm website.

Then I go and find Gray.

He’s in the hallway outside his room with his phone in his hand, and he already knows. Of course he does. His name is on the complaint next to mine.

“Carmine?” I ask.

“Bennett. Two minutes ago.” He looks at me with nothing on his face at all. That’s how I know how bad it is. “They’re going to pull us both.”

“I know.”

“Reese.” He puts the phone in his pocket. “I want you to hear this from me before anybody organizes anything. If it comes down to one of us, it’s me. Say the word and I’ll withdraw myself and the complaint has nothing to attach to.”

“That’s not how it works and you know it. The complaint is about my registration. You’re just the man standing next to it.”

“Then let me be the man standing next to it somewhere else.”

“No.”

“Reese.”

“I said no, and I’m going to keep saying it, and I need you to do something harder than falling on a sword.” I make myself stop and think about what he needs me to say. “Go tell the other seven what’s happening. Then keep all eight of you off that phone. Nobody calls your father. Nobody calls a lawyer. Nobody calls my mother.”

His jaw goes tight. “Why?”

“Because I know exactly one person who can fix this and I’d rather cut my own hand off than dial him.”

Gray looks at me for a second.

“Then don’t dial him,” he says.

“That’s not helpful.”

“It’s not advice. It’s an observation.” He steps back from the door. “He’ll already know, Reese. It’s been on every rowing site since eleven.”

I go back to my room, put my phone face down on the desk, and stare at it for twenty minutes while I try to muster up the courage to call my father. I’m unsuccessful.

At 3:20 there’s a knock on the door.

My father is in the hallway in a charcoal suit with a leather folio under his arm. He hasn’t slept. There’s nobody with him.

“May I come in?”

“Where’s Mom?”

“Atlanta.” He doesn’t dress it up. “She isn’t coming.”

I stand in the doorway with my hand on the frame and don’t move. He waits. Neither of us says anything until my hand starts to ache.

“I’m not here to talk about the article,” he says. “There’s a committee at four and I need to be in front of it before they vote. I’d rather do that with your permission than without it, but I’m going to do it either way, so this is a courtesy and I want to be honest that it’s a courtesy.”

“You knew before I called anybody.”

“I read the article the morning it ran.” He shifts the folio. “I’ve been in the car since before dawn. I found out about the complaint at a gas station somewhere in South Carolina, a little after eleven, from somebody at the firm.”

“You were already driving here.”

“Yes.”