Page 56 of The Secrets We Keep

Maybe just telling the other “I love you” was enough.

Of course it was.

There were a few more awkward moments before Jasper said goodbye. But he hung up feeling closer to his father than he ever had.

Chapter 17

ROB STOOD,drenched from the chest downward. The rain had at last stopped, but he felt like a sponge that had sat too long in dirty water. He looked up at the sky and could make out patches of blue peeking through the gray swatches of clouds.

He turned back to the young police officer, who was still waiting to hear what he wanted to do.

“Sir? You need us to get you somewhere?”

Rob debated, thinking of a young man, perhaps out in this same rain, getting almost as drenched as he was. He opened his mouth again to speak, unsure of what he was about to say.

“Sir? Where were you headed?”

Somehow, Rob couldn’t remember how to get his mouth working to form words.Where am I going? The easy answer is to the airport. Back to what? An empty house? A beautiful, magazine-layout-worthy house that is lovely to behold but feels like no one lives there?

“Sir? I really need to get going. We have another call.”

Rob could hear, as though there for proof, squawking on the radio she had mounted on her shoulder. He wondered if Jasper had gotten back home again, wondered if he was thinking of him with the same intensity.

“There’s nothing in life that can’t be fixed with some talk—and an apology.”

“Beg your pardon?” the officer said as she looked over at her partner in the blue-and-white police car.

“Never mind. Can you guys give me a ride to the North Side? Um, Rogers Park?” As he spoke the words, he noticed his Uber driver rolling away from the scene in a yellow cab.

The cop rolled her eyes. In her expression was the thought that he was a nut case, like all the other nut cases she encountered every day. “You sure? That’s not the direction your Uber was headed.” She sighed and didn’t wait for a response. “Let me see.” Her hips swayed as she sidled back to the patrol car and conferred briefly with her partner, a heavy-set guy with a buzz cut.

When she came back, she said, “We need to head out. Sorry, but I can’t transport you. You can call a cab.”

“But I can’t,” Rob protested. He pulled his iPhone from his pocket. It dripped. Even though he didn’t need to, he pointed to it, pronouncing it “dead.”

“Okay.” She blew out a long rush of air. She returned to the cruiser, got inside, and left the passenger door open as she used the car’s radio, he guessed, to make a call.

She came back and told him a cab would be there in a minute or two. “Good luck,” she wished him.

“I’m gonna need it.”

As the news van backed out, along with the fire truck, a cab pulled in. He tapped on his horn.

The cabbie’s grimace was plain to see as Rob, dripping wet, climbed into the back seat.

The driver, a Middle Eastern man in his forties, Rob guessed, continued to eye him in the rearview mirror. “Where to, sir?”

What street did Jasper live on? He drew a blank. It was on the Far North Side of the city, up by Evanston. He thought for a moment and nothing came to him, then suddenly, the name of the L stop nearby popped into his head. “Jarvis.”

“Do you have an address, sir? Jarvis runs a long way west.”

“Just drop me off at the L station.”

The driver narrowed his eyes at him. “Really?” He probably wondered why Rob wanted to take a cab to an L station far out of the way.

But satisfying the cabbie’s curiosity was not his problem. He was the paying customer, so he said simply, “Really. Now can we please go?”

As they were backing up, the sun emerged, brilliant, dousing everything with sudden golden light. The driver turned around and started up a four-lane city street. The pavement steamed. And even the litter, cracked pavement, and boarded-up storefronts looked clean. Wonderful.