Chapter 10: Scranton

A man came down the Sayre house steps buttoning his overcoat.

He was Linc at fifty-eight, with the same gray eyes gone hard and the same jaw gone heavy.

"Lincoln."

"Dad."

His father looked at the milk crate of notebooks, and then at Jess's thermos, and then at me.

He looked at me.

"So this is the gardener."

"Her name is Frannie," Linc said. "She just beat a fake plagiarism charge your merger partner's office filed against her."

"I don't know anything about that."

"I know you don't. You never do."

His father let that go.

"Thanksgiving is at the Ogdens' in Greenwich," he said. "Thursday, four o'clock. Wear the blue suit. Marshall would like a photograph."

"I have plans."

"Cancel them."

He got into the back of the gray car.

The car pulled out past us so close that its mirror brushed Jess's sleeve.

Linc stood in the road with his hands in fists.

"What plans?" I asked.

"I don't know yet," he said. "I just didn't want to go."

Jess looked at me.

I looked at Jess.

She shrugged a shoulder at me.

"My dad does ham," I said. "In Scranton. It's a five-hour drive, the house is the size of your bathroom, and he'll put you to work."

Linc turned around.

"Are you asking me home for Thanksgiving?"

"I'm asking if you want a ham."

"Yes," he said, so fast that Jess laughed out loud. "Yes. I want the ham."

We left Wednesday morning in his car, because mine was a bus ticket.

He drove the whole way with one wrist on the wheel and asked me questions.

What was my dad like?

"Funny. Loud. Feeds people."

What did he do?

"Roofs. Thirty years of roofs."

Did he know about the rulebook?

"He knows I have a fake boyfriend with a lot of money."

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