Honey, I pay for your phone because I want you to have it for precisely this kind of situation. It doesn’t do any good if you don’t carry it.”
“I’m sorry.” This would be good practice, I thought, for talking to Jimmy Liff. I opened the jar of peanut butter, but the spoon slipped from my hands and fell into the crack between my desk and the foot of my bed. I looked back into the jar.
“You could have left a more detailed message. It was cryptic, what you said.”
I got down on my hands and knees to retrieve the spoon. To my dismay, I saw it had fallen in a small pile of general dorm floor detritus—dust, an apple core, the chemistry study guide I had searched for in vain the previous month. I frowned, disgusted with myself. Brooms, mops, and vacuums were available for checkout at the front desk, but I had yet to bother.
“Hello? Veronica?”
Someone was knocking at my door.
“What is that?” my father asked. “What’s that racket? Where are you now?”
I opened my door to find Marley Gould, one hand raised, ready to knock again, her other hand holding her French horn case. She was still wearing her long, puffy coat and matching hat, and she looked even younger than usual, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright from the cold.
“I heard you were in a car accident!” She pointed at me. “You hurt your lip?”
“Yes, but I’m okay. I’m on the phone, though. Do you…do you need anything?”
“Veronica? Hello?” The phone had slipped to my shoulder, but my father’s voice was still easy to hear. “Are you talking to someone else? Could you give me your full attention for just a moment? Would that be too much to ask, considering I just drove forty-five miles to come find you?”
“Sorry. I’m here.” I smiled at Marley and mouthed an apology to her as well, easing the door closed between us. “Sorry,” I said again. “That was one of my residents.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I ate a fingerful of peanut butter and swallowed. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
I sat back down on my bed. I was going to have to tell him sooner or later. And I needed to ask him about insurance, and what he thought I should do.
“I was dropping friends off at the airport.”
“What? Then why did you call from Topeka?” His voice sounded different, quieter. He’d switched to his headset. “That’s the opposite direction from the airport.”
I took in another fingerful of peanut butter, trying to think. My sister and I had learned early on that lying to my father required extremely quick thinking and steely nerves. Elise had pulled it off a few times—when she was a teenager, she would go round and round with him about whether traffic really could have been bad enough to make her miss her curfew, or whether there was any way to prove that she’d known someone in the backseat of her car had been drinking a beer. Even with her speed and bravado, he usually found the hole in her story. I myself had long ago decided that lying to him wasn’t worth the trouble. I hadn’t tried it since I was a child.
“How did I get to Topeka?”
He inhaled slowly, exhaled quickly. “Yes, Veronica. I’m asking how you got to Topeka.”
I gave him an abbreviated version.
“You hitchhiked?” He was suddenly much louder. “You did the exact thing I told you to never do?”
“But it worked out,” I said cheerily. “He just took me to, you know…”
“The Hardee’s on the turnpike.”
“Right!” I swallowed more peanut butter.
“In Topeka?”
“Mm-hmm.”
There was no reply. I thought I’d lost the connection.
“Dad?”
“Why take you so far away? Why didn’t he just take you to Lawrence?”
“He missed the exit.”
There was a long, long pause.
“Dad. I am exhausted. I just want to take a shower. And since you’re driving, and I’m home safe, maybe we can talk lat—”
“Aren’t there two or three exits to Lawrence?”
I nodded. It would communicate nothing on the phone, but it was all I could manage.
“Oh my God. Oh my God, Oh my God. OH MY GOD.” The phone seemed to shake in my hand.
“Dad. Please calm down. I’m fine.”
I heard a dull thud, a gloved hand hitting a steering wheel, perhaps.
“DID THIS PERSON TOUCH YOU?”
“No.”
“DID HE HURT YOU IN ANY WAY?”
“No, Dad, no. I’m fine.”
“Because if he did…If he did, I will find him and KILL HIM. Or I will…I will find him and PAY SOMEONE to KILL HIM. You are…You have to promise