The door finally opened and Dan walked through, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.

“Man, I’m so sorry you had to wait.”

“It’s okay,” Kevin said, smiling as if he hadn’t spent the better part of an hour twiddling and tweeting his thumbs.

They shook hands and Dan nodded for him to follow. They’d met like this many times, but something felt different. Everything from the plane ride here to waiting in the lobby for so long to Dan’s quickly ushering him inside.

I’m just being paranoid.

“We had to have a meeting right before everybody took off for Thanksgiving,” Dan said as he walked to his office. “What a joke.”

“Everything okay?”

Dan gave a half laugh as they took their seats, Dan behind the desk and Kevin in front. Kevin had noted how busy people outside Dan’s office seemed, busier than he’d ever seen them. Inside the office, Dan’s big body tilted back in a chair that appeared beaten into submission.

“So how are you doing?” Dan asked it like a counselor, in a tone that wanted to know if he was about ready to jump out a fifty-first-story window.

“Doing well.”

“Trip up here good?”

Kevin nodded as he shifted in his seat. He already knew the answer he’d been dreading. He wasn’t being Debbie Downer, but he knew. Dan’s serious glance, his tone, the awkward small talk.

“Jenny feeling okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. She keeps getting more uncomfortable but that’s part of the process.”

“When are the babies due again?”

“Technically February but we’re now thinking it’ll be more like January. Hoping, at least.”

Hoping for a lot of things, Dan.

“Wow. And what are you having?”

“Two more boys.”

Dan nodded and raised his eyebrows in a manner that said, You’re in deep, buddy. He didn’t need to tell him. Kevin knew too well.

“You ready for the twins?”

“I don’t know if anybody is ever ready for one, much less two.”

“See, that’s why I never married,” Dan said as he glanced down at his desk and pulled over a document. “Then I’d be sitting there like you—one with two more on the way. I can barely manage owning a dog.”

Speaking of dogs, the hot dog Kevin had grabbed at the airport for lunch no longer seemed like a sensible, time-saving decision. Now it was barking somewhere deep down inside of his gut.

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Boom.

“That’s the opening line of every bad piece of news there is,” Kevin said.

“Man, this isn’t personal, you know.”

Sure is to me, buddy.

Kevin nodded and kept his mouth shut. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“We’re not going to be able to renew the retainer,” Dan said, looking at the document that was surely the one Kevin was hoping to sign and bring back home to Jenny and the boys. “I know we’ve been talking and I’ve been telling you it looked promising. And it did for a while . . .”