Maybe the phone slipping.
Then she whispered, “Dad?”
He looked at me.
I had not seen that expression on his face since I was a teenager and had once backed his truck into the mailbox.
Not rage.
Worse.
Disappointment sharpened into something very deliberate.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
Vanessa inhaled so hard the sound came through the speaker.
“You’re alive.”
“Apparently.”
“Why are you at Natalie’s house?”
Dad pulled out the chair beside me and sat down again.
He reached for his coffee.
“Why are you telling people I’m dead?”
Vanessa recovered faster than I expected.
“We weren’t telling people. I was trying to reach Natalie.”
“You told her Harold found me.”
A pause.
“Dad, listen—”
“And you said you found my papers.”
