Sam turned on her phone.
There were several work emails, a few birthday greetings from friends, but Sam scrolled down until she found the expected birthday missive from Ben Bernard, her sister’s husband. They had met once a very long time ago. The two would probably not recognize each other in the street, but Ben had an endearing sense of responsibility toward Charlie, that he would do for his wife what she could not herself.
Sam smiled at Ben’s message, a photo of Mr. Spock giving a Vulcan salute, with the words: Logic dictates that I should wish you a happy birthday.
Sam had only once returned an email from Ben, on 9/11, to let him know that she was safe.
The egg timer buzzed. She poured some milk into her hot tea, then sat back at the counter.
Sam pulled a notepad and pen from her briefcase. She tackled the work emails, answering some, forwarding others, making follow-up notes, and worked until her tea was cold and the yogurt and granola were gone.
Fosco jumped onto the counter to inspect the bowl.
Sam looked at the time. She should take her shower and go into the office.
She looked down at her phone. She tapped her fingers on the counter.
She swiped over to the screen for voicemails.
Another anticipated birthday missive.
Sam had not seen her father face to face in over twenty years. They had stopped talking when Sam was in law school. There had been no argument or official break between them, but one day, Sam was the good daughter who called her father once or twice a month, and the next day, she was not.
Initially, Rusty had tried to reach out to her, and when Sam did not reach back, he had started calling during her class hours to leave phone messages at her dorm. He wasn’t overly intrusive. If Sam happened to be in, he did not ask to speak with her. He never asked her to call him back. The relayed messages said that he was there if she needed him, or that he had been thinking about her, or he had thought to check in. During the ensuing years, he had called reliably on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
When Sam had moved to Portland to work in the district attorney’s office, he had left messages at her office on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
When she had moved to New York to start her career in patent law, he had left messages at her office on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday.
Then there was suddenly such a thing as mobile phones, and on the second Friday of every month and on her birthday, Rusty had left voicemails on Sam’s flip phone, then her Razr, then her Nokia, then her BlackBerry, and now it was her iPhone that told Sam that her father had called at 5:32 this morning, on her birthday.
Sam could predict the pattern of his call if not the exact content. Rusty had developed a peculiar formula over the years. He would start with the usual ebullient greeting, render a weather report because, for unknowable reasons, he felt the weather in Pikeville mattered, then he would add a strange detail about the occasion of his call—the day of her birth, that particular second Friday on which he was reaching out—and then a non sequitur in lieu of a farewell.
There had been a time when Sam scowled at Rusty’s name on a pink while-you-were-away message, deleted his voicemails without a second thought, or delayed listening to them for so long that they rolled off the system.
Now, she played the message.
“Good morning, Sammy-Sam!” her father bellowed. “This is Russell T. Quinn, at your service. It is currently forty-three degrees, with winds coming out of the southwest at two miles per hour. Humidity is at thirty-nine percent. Barometric pressure is holding at thirty.” Sam shook her head in bewilderment. “I am calling you today, the very same day that, in 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, to remind you, my dear Samantha, to not lose your head on your forty-fourth birthday.” He laughed, because he always laughed at his own cleverness. Sam waited for the sign-off. “‘Exit, pursued by a bear.’”
Sam smiled. She was about to delete the voicemail when, uncharacteristically, Rusty added something new.
“Your sister sends her love.”
Sam felt her brow furrow. She scrubbed back the voicemail to listen to the last part again.
“… a bear,” Rusty said, then after a short pause, “Your sister sends her love.”
Sam doubted very seriously that Charlie had sent any such thing.
The last time she’d talked to Charlie—the last time she had even been in the same room with her—there had been a definite and immediate ending to their relationship, an understanding that there was neither the need nor the desire for either of them to talk to each other ever again.
Charlie had been in her last year at Duke. She had flown to New York to visit Sam and to interview at several white shoe firms. Sam realized at the time that her sister was not visiting her so much as treating Sam’s apartment as a free place to stay in one of the most expensive cities on earth, but almost a decade had passed since she’d seen her little sister, and Sam had been looking forward to the two of them reacquainting as adults.
The first shock of the trip was not that Charlie had brought a strange man with her, but that the strange man was her husband. Charlie had dated Ben Bernard for less than a month before legally binding herself to someone about whom she knew absolutely nothing. The decision was irresponsible and dangerous, and but for the fact that Ben was one of the most kind, most decent human beings on the planet—not to mention that he was clearly head over heels in love with Charlie—Sam would have been livid with her sister for such a stupid, impetuous act.
The second shock was that Charlie had canceled all of her interviews. She had taken the money Sam had sent to buy proper business attire and instead used it to purchase tickets to see Prince at Madison Square Garden.
This brought about the third, most fatal shock.
Charlie was planning to work with Rusty.
She had insisted that she would only be in the same building with their father, not involved in Rusty’s actual practice, but to Sam, the distinction held no difference.
Rusty took risks at work that followed him home. The people who were in his office, in the office that Charlie would soon share, were the kinds of people who burned down your house, who went to your home looking for you, and when they found out you weren’t there, murdered your mother and shot your sister and chased you through the woods with a shotgun because they wanted to rape you.
The final altercation between Sam and Charlie had not taken place immediately. They had argued in fits and starts for three long days in Charlie’s planned five-day visit.
Then on the fourth day, Sam had finally exploded.