Page 113 of Wreckage and Rain

Sonny will call. Let it go to voicemail. Save the voicemail. Don't engage.

Me

Understood.

I put the phone face-down on the writing desk.

I go downstairs and ask Lorna for another cup of coffee.

***

He calls a little before eleven.

I'm in the parlor, drinking my second cup of coffee, pretending to read the Post and Courier on my phone. The phone rings. SONNY BENNET. The picture is from last Christmas, him in a sweater I didn't buy him, smiling for a camera he hadn't been told was on.

I let it ring through and go to voicemail.

It rings again. And again. And again. I don't pick up. Dom said let it go to voicemail, and for once the smart thing and what I want are the same thing. I want to hear what he sounds like. I don't want to give him a word back.

The calls stop.

I listen to the voicemails with the phone flat on the table, on speaker, like something I'd rather not hold.

The first is an order. Call me back. The second is a threat dressed up as concern. The third is rage, and under the rage I can hear the moment he understands it's real, all of it, and that he is no longer the man who controls everything.

The last one comes after a long pause. I can hear him deciding whether to leave it at all.

You are my son.

His voice breaks on the last word. I've never heard him sound like that. Sonny Bennet, sixty-six years old, the granite face, theman who has never let anyone see that he is actually capabale of human emotions.

For half a second, the boy who tiptoed past his father's study at midnight wants to call back and steady him.

The man who was manipulated and controlled doesn't.

I don't call back. I don't text. I let the messages sit there saved, like Dom told me to.

I put the phone face-down on the table and look at the needlepoint footstool in front of the chair. A faded top, the roses on it gone gray. I look at the stitches. I trace them with my eyes.

I don't cry. I think I should. I think the moment is asking for it. The tears are somewhere else, saved for some other day, for something that hasn't happened yet.

Dom texts.

Dom

He call you?

Me

He left a voicemail. I Didn't pick up.

Dom

Atta boy. Get out of the parlor. Go take a walk.

Me

Copy.