Chapter 17: The Voicemail

I sat down on the hall floor beside him with the quilt around my shoulders.

The boards were cold through the fabric.

"You don't have to do this tonight," I said.

"If I wait until I'm ready, I'll be eighty."

He held out the phone.

I didn't take it.

I put my hand over his instead, and our fingers closed together around it.

He pressed play.

For a second there was only static.

Then a woman laughed.

It was a warm, quick laugh, and it filled the whole dark hallway.

"Hi, it's me," she said. "Don't be mad that I'm calling. I couldn't wait until dinner."

Abel's breath caught beside me.

"Come home early if you can. I have something to tell you, and you're going to make that face you make."

"Bring the good coffee, not the gas station one."

"And Abel? Nothing's wrong. I just want to see you when I say it. Okay. I love you. Bye."

The message ended.

The phone went dark in his hand.

Neither of us moved.

I listened to the refrigerator hum in the kitchen.

I listened to him breathe in, and not out, for a long time.

Then his shoulders folded forward, and he made a sound I had not known a big man could make.

I put my arms around him.

He cried into my neck, not quietly, with his whole back shaking, and I held on until the shaking slowed.

I did not say sorry.

That was the rule, and it was the right one.

"She told me a week before," he said, when he could. "She said, I'm going to tell you something at dinner on Thursday. I thought it was a vacation."

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