Free Inexcusable by Chris Lynch Page B

alone.”
    â€œThanks, though. Anyway. Thanks, Dad. Ya big baby.”
    â€œWhat, thanks?”
    â€œYou know what for. You want me to drive home?”
    â€œI can drive. Why wouldn’t I drive? I’m still the father here, y’know.”
    â€œHere, let me drive. You’re scaring me. Like when Father Murphy died.”
    Oh, no. Father Murphy, his dog. I said it. I didn’t mean to. Big mistake.
    â€œAw. Remember ol’ Murph?”
    He still never knew I hated ol’ Murph. He still refused to acknowledge that his dog and I didn’t get along. Was that a bad thing or a beautiful thing? I don’t know, but it made me want to give the old man a squeeze, except that might make him more wobbly still.
    â€œThere, you drive,” he choked, dangling the keys.
    Emotional guy, my dad.
    We pulled out of the parking lot. We got waves from all over. From lifelong friends, from new friends, from guys I’d be pressed to even name. Call me. I’ll call you. You coming by later? Don’t blow me off. I wouldn’t blow you off. I’m surely blowing him off. Ray kind of slumped in his seat while I spirited him out of there, like some big-timer trying to dodge the paparazzi on the way out of his court appearance.
    â€œThanks,” I said, “for, like, raising me and all that. You know. Remember? All that stuff you did.”
    He sniffed. “Oh right,” he said, “that.”
    We drove the rest of the way home in silence, the two of us just appreciating the lovely warm afternoon through familiar streets, windows wide, radio playing low from Ray’s old jazz station.
    It was altogether too somber when we pulled into the driveway and walked, still so silent, up the walk to the house like we had done fifty million times before, but that felt like we would never ever, not even once do again. I knew this was not entirely rational, but it was the feeling all the same. Everything right now had the feeling of lasts, of finishes, of playing out for good, forever. We would do these things again, me and my dad, surely. Surely we would, another fifty million times, just like this, and fifty million more in other ways. Nothing was finishing,nothing had to finish if we didn’t say so, no matter how it felt right now.
    I did something then that I hadn’t done since I was a small somebody else. I took Ray’s hand, reached out and took it as it swung there, as he ambled up the stone path in front of me.
    And he took mine, without looking, without commenting, without even seeming to notice. His fingers curled tight around mine and held on.
    â€œRisk?” he said as we came into the living room.
    We had an hour before Rollo was supposed to pick me up.
    â€œIndubitably,” I said. A word I picked up early, and used to sound light and sparky when I needed.
    â€œRefreshment?” I said.
    â€œIndubitably,” he said.
    We sat down to two icy cold Heinekens and a large bag of Bugles, across the globe from each other, to settle the events of world conflict and control.
    But first we did the natural thing: Each capped the fingertips of one hand with Bugles, held them up for show, then ate them off one by one before getting down to serious military business.
    We had, in the past months, each been guilty of blatantly pathetic strategy when necessary, in order to keep this one continuous game alive and balanced. But now time thundered on. We seemed to have just sat down. We seemedto have just started. We seemed to have plenty more time and turns still in front of us when Dad glanced at his watch and reminded me that Rollo would be here any minute now.
    â€œWhat do you want to do?” he asked.
    We hunched over the board, staring and studying, more like chess than silly old Risk, more like a fresh and interesting compelling new contest than the same peanut we had been nosing back and forth across the table at each other since the day Fran left the house.
    What do