“I know.” Her voice sounds worn. “But I always worry.”

“Well, knock it off,” I tell her, trying to laugh. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

I wait for Margo to laugh and tell me I’m too much or say that when God made me he made a mistake and gave me too many funny bones. She doesn’t.

She sighs. “Gary finally talked to your father. He says as long as you’ve found a place to live and you’re working and he doesn’t have to support you anymore, he can’t see any point in making you bring the car back and you may as well keep it.”

I feel like someone just knocked all the wind out of me. I grab on to the side of the phone booth with my bare hand. The metal is freezing cold, but I’m worried I’ll fall over if I let go, like maybe my knees have forgotten how to be knees. The relief about the car, about not having to go back, that freedom isn’t as sweet as I thought it would be. “So, I guess he figures I’d cost him an old Mercury’s worth of groceries between now and when I turn eighteen.”

“I thought this is what you wanted,” Margo says.

“It is.” There’s a new piece of gum on top of the phone. It’s neon yellow. It’s still wet. I wonder what flavor it was. “But you know.”

“I do. I know, sweets.”

The phone clicks and the recording tells me to add more change.

“I should go,” I say, even though I still have a ton of dimes.

“April,” she says. She almost never says my name.

“What?”

“Your dad got hurt.”

“I’m not even sure he has feelings,” I say.

“They let him out of the hospital this morning.”

I drop a dime in to get the recording to shut up. “What do you mean?”

“Gary, when he went to talk to your dad, he took a couple friends and some of them had opinions about things.”

“Me?”

“You, Irene Bartkowski, a few other things. Gary didn’t realize there was bad blood there. But Chuck, you know, he’s Gary’s bartender, he was friends with Joe Bartkowski. He has opinions about why Joe left.”

“So he hurt my dad?”

“Gary says things just escalated. Fast. But he got in the middle and took your dad to the ER. It’s a few broken ribs.”

“And he’s okay?”

“Right as rain, safe as houses,” she says. “Gary drove him home. Ribs hurt, but they’ll heal. And knowing your dad, he’s happy for the pain pills.”

“Bonus.” I want to pull the gum off the top of the phone. I want it gone. I have to concentrate hard on not touching it. It’s like this urge.