“Don’t bother. I’m walking.” As he put on speed without looking back I could have thought he shouted “Rush” and then “Whoosh.” He wasn’t directing himself or referring to his pace. Once I might have laughed at the pronunciation of his sneezes, but not now. I only hoped they were merely symptoms of a cold he ought to be more than able to recover from at his age. If his energy and strength were being drained as much as I feared, it was all the more urgent to think how to save him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

A Return Visit

“You know who this is and why,” I said. “Let me have an answer.”

A simulated voice, if no more artificial than I suspected hers might be, had answered on Bella’s behalf. I’d begun to wonder if anything about her wasn’t false. I was too enraged by how she’d managed to estrange me even further from my son to leave her any more of a message. Suppose she let Roy hear what I’d said and perhaps played it to Julia too, demonstrating yet again how deluded and obsessed I was, bordering on dangerous? So long as my call made her respond, I couldn’t afford to care. “Do your worst,” I said, having ended the call, and laid the phone on my desk.