forget the most important thing of all.”
“Would you like to sit down?” said Elliot. He led them a few paces further inside. “Did you try calling her?”
“Yes, of course.” The professor sat down heavily on Elliot’s couch. “No answer. But Dory hates me. Maybe she’s telling Julia not to pick up.”
That sounded harsh even for his ex, but Elliot preferred not to weigh in. He went to the kitchen and poured a glass of water for the professor.
“Thanks,” said Keelan. His hand shook as he accepted it. “I don’t mean to make Dory the villain in this.”
“Don’t worry,” said Elliot. “Dory’s not exactly my favourite person.”
“Mine either,” said Keelan, glancing up quickly. “Don’t repeat that.”
“To who?” said Elliot. He sat down in his desk chair and wheeled it over to face the professor. “Seriously, Dory and I don’t talk.”
The professor drained the glass of water and set it down on the coffee table. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“I saw Julia a couple of months ago,” said Elliot. “She came to see me.”
“She’s okay?”
“She was then.” Since Julia’s visit, Elliot had thought back to their earlier encounters, as children and teenagers thrown together every so often at their parents’ departmental gatherings. At nine or ten, watching a movie in someone’s basement as the adults mingled upstairs, Julia had covered her eyes during a scary part and fallen asleep that way, a slip of elbows and knees in the couch corner. Another year: hanging out in Elliot’s backyard during a summer barbeque, they’d counted fireflies after the sun went down. That time, Julia had been a goth with dyed jet black hair and black lipstick, and Elliot’s mother had quizzed her about nihilism and French existentialism and the ideological basis for her extreme style. Julia had said that, contrary to the usual reports, her choices were all meaningless. He remembered laughing at his mother’s expression of surprise.
“And she’s pregnant?”
Elliot raised an eyebrow, wondering why the older man sounded so unsure. “Not anymore. She would have already had the baby. I think she said she was due in mid-October.”
Keelan blinked. Beads of water clung here and there to his beard. “So where are they?”
“I don’t know,” said Elliot. “But I can email her.” He looked at Keelan. “Did you try that already?” If Julia was truly choosing to ignore her father, Elliot didn’t want to be the one engineering an unwanted reunion.
“No, I didn’t bring my computer.” Keelan seemed upset that Elliot could not simply point him in their direction. “There was one at the hotel, but my password notebook is at home and nobody there could help me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Elliot. He rolled back to the computer and typed a short message. Hi Julia. Your dad is with me and wants to see you. Can you tell me your address? Thanks, Elliot. It sounded so ordinary, so civil, after Julia’s cryptic last messages to him. “Okay, sent. Now we wait.”
“More waiting,” said Keelan. Then he yawned without bothering to cover his mouth. “I thought I’d be with my daughter by now.”
The traffic sounds had quieted, and Elliot checked the time. “It’s after curfew, Professor. But you can stay here. The couch is a pullout.”
“Is my car going to be okay on the street?”
“Should be.” Elliot wondered why Keelan had bothered to bring his suitcase up if he had come by car. Unless he had foreseen their whole exchange, right down to the invitation. Maybe the old man really was a genius.
“So you and Dory don’t get along either,” said Keelan. He slid his arms out of his overcoat and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “She’s not an easy woman.”
Elliot shrugged. “It’s never fun to get dumped. That’s all.”
“You’re a diplomatic young man.” With a grunt of effort, Keelan bent over to untie his shoelaces, then placed them underneath the side table. “Did you see me on television?”
“I did,” said Elliot. “But I don’t watch much news besides the headlines.”
“I don’t blame you. All the commentary—it’s intolerable stuff, really.” Keelan shook his head, but Elliot thought there might be a smile behind the beard. “They’ve been having me on as an expert. Ethics for End Times, you know. The Survivalist’s Code.”
Elliot remembered Gretchen complaining about the books when they were first published. “Sensational,” she’d said, and it had not been a compliment.
“I think it’s smart to consider how people might actually behave in a disaster,” said Elliot. “There’s no reason to think we’ll just helplessly stand by while terrible