It’s taking forever for them to get Robin. I will definitely catch hell when the phone bill comes with the charges for this call and the one to Rudy in Saskatchewan.

Finally she gets on, sounding breathless, and asks where I am and if I’m okay. The kitchen phone has a long cord, and I stretch it through the doorway and out into the hall. The theme song from The Dating Game trickles out of the den.

When I tell Robin where I am, she starts to cry. (Is she sorry that I didn’t make it? Or is she simply crying with relief after spending the day wondering if I’d died in a traffic accident?) I wait until she collects herself and then tell her about the demise of Odysseus and how I couldn’t call sooner because I was hitching back home.

(But I could have — from the phone booth outside the Rexall in Kemptville, from the Thruway Hot Shoppe when the salesman from the Hudson’s Bay Company stopped for gas, from a pay phone at the Scobee Diner, where Tinsley and I grabbed a bite while we waited for Arno to pick us up. All I’d needed to do was ask a cashier to change ten dollars into nickels and dimes. So why didn’t I? Was it because Tinsley was there?)

Robin can’t stay on the phone; she has to get back to Oz. She doesn’t ask if I’ll try to come north again to see her. She’s in the camp office, where others can hear. Feeling a sense of urgency, I pour out a rushed synopsis of what I’d hoped to say face-to-face: I really love her. Never felt like this with anyone before. I’ve changed, cut back on smoking. I was driving up there to show her. She’ll see when she gets home from camp. I just need the chance. That’s all I’m asking.

Her reply is a loud sniff. In the background, a voice says, “Honey, they need you in the rec hall.”

“I’ll write to you,” Robin says, and hangs up.

A terrible sense of apprehension coils itself around me and squeezes. Once again I think back to the day Robin departed for Canada. How she didn’t seem pleased that I’d unexpectedly shown up to bid her adieu. How when I whispered I loved her, she didn’t mouth the same (so her father wouldn’t hear). How she didn’t wave or even look back as they drove away. In every letter I’ve written, I’ve said I love her. She hasn’t written it in any of the three letters she’s sent. Even in the crowded camp office just now, when I said it, she could have said something like, “Me, too.”