Page 120 of What Boys Learn

“You can move that,” he said.

I sat down and looked around for the remote, to pause the movie he’d been watching.

“Under the cushion, maybe,” he said. “I assume you’ve got the address of where he and Benjamin were supposed to be headed?”

“Fond du Lac. At his father’s. Or come to think of it, he sometimes said ‘near’ Fond du Lac. And doesn’t the county have the same name? I haven’t been able to find the address. Did you have any luck?”

“Not yet. The father’s named Campbell, right?”

“Yes. I forgot the first name. Something long and biblical. But what if it doesn’t even matter, Robert? What if they drove to Canada? What if they flew to Mexico?”

“Not easy to do without a passport for Benjamin.”

“Florida, then. California. They could be anywhere. They could—”

Robert popped open a beer, handing it to me. “One big swallow. One big breath. Repeat.”

He gestured for me to stand up, found the remote, turned off the television, gestured for me to sit again, and said, “Two more sips. Keep breathing. Good job. Not just on the beer—on the research. I thought this guy had disabled your bullshit meter permanently. Welcome back, friend.”

I looked up at Robert and saw him for the first time in weeks, maybe months. He was scruffy but clean, wearing a big gray sweatshirt and even looser black sweatpants dabbed with dried white paint—I had doubts whether that kitchen project had ever been finished, but I also knew that if it had been my renovation, he would have come through, because that’s how Robert was. Ready to mobilize instantly for someone else’s chore or emergency. Not always so great at dealing with his own.

I took two more sips to dissolve the egg-shaped lump at the base of my throat.

I said, “You’re going to lecture me for being stupid enough to trust Curtis.”

“I won’t.”

When he sat down hard next to me, the couch shifted an inch. He’d put on a few pounds since we broke up.

“Fond du Lac is a small town,” he said. “Forty thousand people. Can’t be too hard to find a man with a biblical name.Ifthat’s where they are. And if he meant the town, not the county. But you remember him saying ‘near’?”

Sour beer rose up in my throat. “I think so.”

Fond du Lac, the town or the county.Fond du Lac. You didn’t just invent Fond du Lac out of thin air. And then again, Green Bay? His wife and daughter had never lived in Green Bay, from what I could tell following two hours of online searches. And the dog? What the fuck was up with pretending to have a dog?

“His father isn’t doing well,” I said, still clinging to islands of fact in a sea of deception. “Curtis has been busy trying to help him.”

Robert had just popped open his own beer when I shouted, “Mattathias! That’s his father’s name. Both of their legal names. Mattathias Campbell, and Curtis’s father was a doctor, too.” I allowed myself one breath of relief. “I’ve got to pee now.”

When I came back from the bathroom, Robert’s face was pink, like he’d been rubbing it, the way he’d often done when we were a couple and he was feeling uncomfortable.

“This whole thing is beyond weird. It doesn’t all add up.” He said it gently, watching my face. “I’m worried there’s stuff you haven’t told me. But don’t worry. I’m gonna go first. This shit has been weighing on me, anyway.” He set his can on the coffee table. “I didn’t resign just because they were going to fire me for the Sidney Mayfield diary thing. I got into some other trouble over the last year.”

“Oh, crap.”

“And,” he held up a finger, cautioning me not to interrupt, “I said some nasty things when Hernández was hired. Personal things. I was jealous he got the job I wanted. It wasn’t a cool thing to do.”

“Okay.”

“And then I was pulled over, leaving a bar. I put my badge on my lap to give the sign. I was with another off-duty cop and he even knew the guys. But it didn’t matter.”

“It shouldn’t matter.”

“Yeah. So, we got reported. The diary thing was just one strike, but it was the third one.”

“All in one year, huh?”

“It’s been a tough fucking year.”