each other in the street, but Ben had an endearing sense of responsibility toward Charlie, that he would do for his wife what she could not herself.
Sam smiled at Ben’s message, a photo of Mr. Spock giving a Vulcan salute, with the words: Logic dictates that I should wish you a happy birthday.
Sam had only once returned an email from Ben, on 9/11, to let him know that she was safe.
The egg timer buzzed. She poured some milk into her hot tea, then sat back at the counter.
Sam pulled a notepad and pen from her briefcase. She tackled the work emails, answering some, forwarding others, making follow-up notes, and worked until her tea was cold and the yogurt and granola were gone.
Fosco jumped onto the counter to inspect the bowl.
Sam looked at the time. She should take her shower and go into the office.
She looked down at her phone. She tapped her fingers on the counter.
She swiped over to the screen for voicemails.
Another anticipated birthday missive.
Sam had not seen her father face to face in over twenty years. They had stopped talking when Sam was in law school. There had been no argument or official break between them, but one day, Sam was the good daughter who called her father once or twice a month, and the next day, she was not.
Initially, Rusty had tried to reach out to her, and when Sam did not reach back, he had started calling during her class hours to leave phone messages at her dorm. He wasn’t overly intrusive. If Sam happened to be in, he did not ask to speak with her. He never asked her to call him back. The relayed messages said that he was there if she needed him, or that he had been thinking about her, or he had thought to check in. During the ensuing years, he had called reliably on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
When Sam had moved to Portland to work in the district attorney’s office, he had left messages at her office on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
When she had moved to New York to start her career in patent law, he had left messages at her office on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
Then there was suddenly such a thing as mobile phones, and on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday, Rusty had left voicemails on Sam’s flip phone, then her Razr, then her Nokia, then her BlackBerry, and now it was her iPhone that told Sam that her father had called at 5:32 this morning, on her birthday.
Sam could predict the pattern of his call if not the exact content. Rusty had developed a peculiar formula over the years. He would start with the usual ebullient greeting, render a weather report because, for unknowable reasons, he felt the weather in Pikeville mattered, then he would add a strange detail about the occasion of his call—the day of her birth, that particular second Friday on which he was reaching out—and then a non sequitur in lieu of a farewell.
There had been a time when Sam scowled at Rusty’s name on a pink while-you-were-away message, deleted his voicemails without a second thought, or delayed listening to them for so long that they rolled off the system.
Now, she played the message.
“Good morning, Sammy-Sam!” her father bellowed. “This is Russell T. Quinn, at your service. It is currently forty-three degrees, with winds coming out of the southwest at two miles per hour. Humidity is at thirty-nine percent. Barometric pressure is holding at thirty.” Sam shook her head in bewilderment. “I am calling you today, the very same day that, in 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, to remind you, my dear Samantha, to not lose your head on your forty-fourth birthday.” He laughed, because he always laughed at his own cleverness. Sam waited for the sign-off. “‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’”
Sam smiled. She was about to delete the voicemail when, uncharacteristically, Rusty added something new.
“Your sister sends her love.”
Sam felt her brow furrow. She scrubbed back the voicemail to listen to the last part again.
“… a bear,” Rusty said, then after a short pause, “Your sister sends her love.”
Sam doubted very seriously that Charlie had sent any such thing.
The last time she’d talked to Charlie—the last time she had even been in the same room with her—there had been a definite and