“Grant, if you’re going through my desk right now, put your hands back in your pockets.”
“We’re not at your house yet,” Vanessa said.
Dad looked toward the clock.
6:38.
“Good.”
Then he ended the call.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
I stared at him.
He stared at the phone.
Finally I asked the obvious question.
“Why are they so certain you’re dead?”
Dad pushed his plate away.
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
There was a reason he had been at my house.
Two days earlier, Dad called and said his furnace had started making a strange noise.
He was seventy-three, stubborn, independent, and convinced that paying a professional for anything he could possibly repair himself was a moral failure.
I told him not to touch it.
He ignored me.
Twenty minutes later, he admitted the entire heating system had shut down.
A winter storm was coming.
I told him I was driving over.
He told me not to.
So naturally I did.
When I arrived, the house was already cold.
Dad had packed one duffel bag and insisted he would stay at a motel until the repair company could get there.
I refused.
He complained for forty minutes.
Then he climbed into my car.
Because I lived three states away, my visit had already been planned for later that month.
I had flown in for work nearby and rented a car.
After the furnace problem, I changed the plan and brought Dad back with me for a few days.
Vanessa knew none of that.
Apparently neither did Grant.
Dad had not told them because, in his words, he did not need committee approval every time he spent a weekend with one of his children.
Now that small decision had exposed something neither of us understood.
At 7:04, Dad called Harold.
