Episodul 158 · Old Enough

A raised voice came from the gate. The woman turned before Soles did.

A man in a dark pullover had come out of the front offices behind a colleague with a tray of papers, and stopped just short of the policeman. He was looking past him at the building.

— There, the woman said.

The man turned back. The policeman stepped into his way.

— You need to stay outside.

— My phone’s on my desk.

— Someone will bring it when they can.

— I need it now.

The woman put her coat on the empty chair and went. Soles followed as far as the road, which was as far as his hip agreed to. Tesa stayed at his side, close enough that her sleeve touched his supported arm.

— She’ll be waiting, the man said. She doesn’t know where I’ve gone.

— Who will? the policeman asked.

— My daughter.

— I have her number, the woman said. She called me yesterday when she couldn’t reach you. We can use my phone.

The policeman checked with the younger agent, who nodded. He stepped back, but stayed between the man and the entrance. The man reached toward the woman’s phone, stopped, and put both hands in his pockets.

— She shouldn’t have to wait.

The first call rang out.

— Again, he said. Put it where she can reach it.

The woman looked at Soles, as if the decision were his. He knew what it was to have someone else’s worry arrive in his head and refuse to leave. Arguing with it had never once sent it away.

— Try once more.

Someone answered the second time. The woman said where they were and that his phone was still inside, then steadied hers against his ear.

— Are you home?

He listened.

— Lock the door. Don’t go out until I get there.

His free hand came out of his pocket and pressed flat against his pants.

— No. Don’t come here.

His mouth eased, then tightened again.

— Where’s your mother?

The woman lowered her eyes. Krista came a little nearer, still leaving him room.

— Can I tell her we’re outside?

He looked at her as if she had interrupted something private. Then he held out the phone.

— Your father’s out of the building, Krista said. He’s with people who can look after him. Are you somewhere safe?

She listened, glanced at the medic, and held the phone where he could hear it.

— Dad? his daughter said.

He turned toward the voice.

Soles looked away from the man’s face. A voice on a phone saying Dad. He had not expected that to find him here, on a road outside a prison, out of a stranger’s phone. Nobody would say his name in that voice again. He kept his eyes on the cones until it passed. It did not entirely pass.

— I’m at home, she said. I’m all right.

— You shouldn’t be there by yourself.

— I’m not. My husband’s here.

The man frowned.

— Your husband?

He took one step toward the gate, then stopped.

— She’s too young.

The woman from records had heard it too. So had Soles: a husband. The man was still trying to get home to a little girl.

The man reached for Soles’s arm. Soles turned his right side away, and Tesa offered her good hand instead.

— This way.

He followed her back to the shelter. Maxim got up from his chair slowly and left it for him. It was the last free chair, and he did not mention it.

The medic crouched in front of him while Krista held the phone by his shoulder.

— Dad. Listen to me. I’m thirty-four.

He bent toward the phone.

— I know how old you are.

— Then stay with them. Please. I’ll come to you.

His knees shifted as though he meant to stand. The medic took his wrist, and Krista lowered the phone into his other hand. He held it away from his ear so he could watch the screen. The woman from records put her coat around his shoulders without fastening it.

— He’s been asking about her for days, she told the medic. I thought he was worried about something at home.

— Tell me when it began.

— Three or four days before the roof, the woman said. He pinned a drawing above his desk, a child’s drawing of a house. I thought his granddaughter had made it. He said his daughter did it that morning, before school.

Tarn had his notebook open. Soles caught his eye.

— Let her tell the medic first.

Tarn shut the notebook halfway and listened.

Maxim was leaning on the shelter’s table. Soles joined him, his left hand on the edge until his hip settled.

— You can have the next chair, Maxim said.

— There isn’t a next chair.

— I didn’t promise delivery today.

Then, lower, without the joke:

— If it gets into people’s heads like that. The ones from the paper, out there somewhere.

— I know.

— I’d know their faces, Maxim said. I’m not sure I’d know mine, after.

Soles had no answer to that. He pushed Maxim’s shoulder with his own, the good side, and Maxim pushed back. Neither of them said anything else about faces. Across the road, the medic had sat down on the step of the van, close enough to catch the man if he stood too fast.

Behind them, the daughter was asking her father to describe what he could see.

— A road, he said. They’re keeping us on the road.

The woman from records came back to the shelter rubbing her hands, and stopped when she noticed she no longer had a coat.

— Did that help?

— He sat down, Soles said.

— He knew her when she spoke. For a moment he looked like himself.

Krista came back for the envelope of photographs.

— His daughter’s coming. The medic has her number.

By the chair, the man lifted the phone to his ear again.

— I can’t get back yet, he said. You’ll have to be good until I come.

The woman’s hands went still.

— Yesterday, Soles said, you told them about the wall getting hot. Did anyone ask you about him?

— No.

Tarn stood at the edge of the shelter. This time he opened the notebook without asking Soles anything.

— Who else? he asked her.

She looked through the gate at the people still coming out.

— I don’t know. You’ll have to ask them.