“I didn’t expect you home so soon.” His brow wrinkled. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired.”
“Okay.” He didn’t look convinced, but it seemed he wasn’t inclined to press the issue. “I’m headed to bed myself.”
“Good night, Dad.”
Nate waited, listening to his dad bustle around in the room next door. He watched the clock on his nightstand, counting the minutes until at last the house lay silent. He gave it an extra thirty minutes after that, just to be sure his dad was asleep.
Finally, he crept out of his bedroom and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen. He might get in trouble when the phone bill came and his dad saw the long-distance call, but there was only one person left on his list of people he might talk to.
The dial tone seemed ridiculously loud in his ear. Luckily, the cord was long enough to reach all the way to their pantry. He closed the door behind him, sinking down to sit on the floor, surrounded by shelves of cereal and Hamburger Helper. It was pitch-dark, but the keys on the handset were lit, and he dialed the number that he’d thought of as his own for nearly eighteen years.
It began to ring as the call went through. It was an hour later in Texas, which meant nearly midnight. He figured his mom might still be awake. Even if he woke her up, she’d probably be happy to hear from him. He wasn’t quite sure yet what he was going to say, but he knew the gist of it: he wanted to go home. He hated Wyoming, and he intended to beg his mother to let him move back to Texas, where it was warm and the wind rarely blew semis over on the interstate and where he didn’t have embarrassingly erotic dreams about other boys.
“Hello?”
It was a man’s voice. Nate froze, his mind reeling. Had he dialed the wrong number?
“Hello?” the man said again, sounding annoyed this time.
Should he hang up? Dial again?
“Hi,” he made himself say. “Maybe I have the wrong number. I’m trying to reach Susan Bradford.”
The man made a noise—something similar to a growl. “Her name’s Susan Jennings now.”
“Oh. Right.” Although it felt like a knife in his heart, hearing his mom called by her maiden name. Worse than that, this meant he did have the right number. It was almost midnight, and his mom had a man in the house.
A man who was most definitely not his dad.
“Is she there?”
“Hang on.”
Nate waited, his heart pounding, his stomach twisting painfully. “Babe?” he heard the man say. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?” Definitely his mother’s voice.
“Hell if I know.”
There was the usual jumble of clunking as the handset changed hands, and then his mom said, “Hello?”
Nate swallowed, suddenly unsure. “Mom?”
“Nate? What’s wrong, honey? Is everything okay?”
Was it? He had no idea how to answer that question.
“Are you hurt or something?” she asked. “Where’s your father?”
“He’s in bed.” And now, Nate’s mind was scrambling for purchase. “I wanted to talk to you. I needed—”
“Nathan, you’re only supposed to call on Wednesdays. You know that.”
She didn’t sound angry, though. Just . . .
Sad?
Guilty?
“Who was that?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer.
“Who was who?”
Such a stupid question. Such a ridiculous pretense, to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who was that guy who answered the phone?”
“Oh. Well, just a friend—”
“He called you ‘babe.’”
“Oh.” Her voice suddenly sounded very small. “Oh, honey. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“Is he living there?”
She didn’t answer, but the silence told him everything.
“For how long?”
“Since . . . Well, since—”
“Since we left?” Because suddenly, it was all clear. He’d heard his aunt and uncle whispering about an affair. He’d seen the way his parents couldn’t look at each other anymore. And all along, he’d assumed it was his father. All that time, moving to Wyoming, being dragged to this shithole of a town, he’d blamed his dad. And all along, his mom had been at home with another man already warming her bed.
Nate hung up. He sat there in the dark, clutching the phone to his chest, just long enough to be sure the line was dead. He put it to his ear, checking for the dial tone, which would soon become incessant beeping of a phone left off the hook too long. Then he stuck the phone between the Froot Loops and Honeycomb cereal and shut the pantry door. If his mom called back, she’d get a busy signal.