“Jesus, Zeke,” I said, but I kind of wished that I had been able to do that to my dad.

“My dad’s secretary asked if she should call the cops, and he said not to. He said we’d get me into a hospital or something, but my mom nixed that. She packed us up, and we drove here because this is where my grandmother lives. I guess my mom grew up here, but she never really talked about it, and she doesn’t seem so jazzed about being back. So we’re here until my mom decides what to do about my dad. She says we might be here forever or we might go back in a month. She just doesn’t know.”

“That sucks,” I told him.

“And, I don’t know, I want to go back home. I miss my house, you know? I have to go back to school at the end of the summer, right? But I don’t really feel like it would be so great if my mom just went back to him. Unless he really changed. But how long would it take for someone like that to change? It feels like it could be a long time.”

“My dad left us,” I told him. “Two years ago. He got his secretary pregnant, and he told my mom just a few days before their anniversary because the secretary was getting mad at him for not telling my mom, and then a few days later, he and this woman moved up north. I guess he’d been planning it for a while. He got a transfer. I think it was a promotion. I don’t know. He kept saying ‘a fresh start,’ but he meant for him and this woman and, you know, that dumb baby. It’s a girl. And you know what they named it?”

“What?” he asked.

“Frances,” I said. “That’s my grandmother’s name, his mom. I never even knew her; she died when I was little. But still. I mean, that’s my name.”

“That’s fucked up,” he admitted.

“I thought so,” I said. “My mom really thought so.”

“Does he call the baby Frankie?” he asked.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I said. “He sent us a birth announcement, and it was all fancy so it just said Frances.”

“Do you talk to him?” he asked.

“Never,” I said. “He sends us money because he has to, but I don’t talk to him. I’ll never talk to him.”

“I haven’t talked to my dad since we moved here,” Zeke told me. “I keep thinking maybe he’ll call, but he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t have our number.”

“Would you talk to him if he called?” I asked. I felt like his answer was important.