Free Rundown by Michael Cadnum

think you’re being fair.”
    Amazingly, I was able to say this without sounding like the proverbial little sister, a quaver in my voice. Cass had always been the one adults spoke to, engaging her in conversation as an equal, her poise deceiving them. They told her all about the bond market, their favorite movies, where to buy the best Italian wines. She asked all the right questions, Oh, really? Only I could see the flat indifference in Cass, how little she cared.
    Cass didn’t mention her talk with me a few nights ago. I had expressed doubts about my maid-of-honor-dress, and hinted that maybe one of her Stanford psych major friends would do the job more elegantly. Cass does not get angry. She exposes the anger that is always there, ready.
    â€œWhy would I do such a thing?” I heard myself ask—a blunder, I knew as soon as I said it.
    â€œThink of the power,” she said. “Think of the position of strength you assert by becoming a victim.”
    She saw me shrink inwardly, my bruised hand reaching the side of my neck, where a thorn scratch had formed a tiny scab, a comma.
    â€œTell me I’m wrong,” she said.
    â€œOf course you are.”
    â€œPromise me,” she said.
    â€œOf course I promise you,” I said, outmaneuvering my sister just slightly.
    Cass found her way to a white iron chair, practically glowing in the dark. Dad wanted to replace the wrought iron with teak.
    â€œYou and Danny have had a fight,” I suggested.
    She slumped pointedly in the chair like someone protesting uncomfortable furniture. “Danny wouldn’t dare fight with me,” she said.
    The other night Cass had threatened to tell Mother an ugly thing about Dad. Sometimes I wondered what it was like to be married, to care so much about someone, but not really know what they were doing when they were away from home.
    â€œDo you miss the days,” I asked, “when we had the apartment by the creek?”
    â€œThat dumpy place,” she said.
    â€œDad turned the television into a computer monitor,” I continued, “and wrote his menus with us looking up words in the Italian dictionary.”
    And then Dad spoke, calling to us. The real Dad, not the man in our memory, asking where was everybody. He was close to us, having drifted in his ambling, possessive way, surveying the plants.
    But for a moment he didn’t see us, and we waited, like it was a game, Dad unaware of our presence.

Chapter 14
    The phone rang the first thing the next morning, right after I ran six fast miles on Dad’s running machine. I had slept badly, waking so many times I had at last given up and watched TV with the sound off.
    I don’t like working out on a speeding conveyor belt, red digits counting the distance in kilometers, reckoning in miles if I pushed a button. It routinely calculated how many calories I was burning off, if I were a one-hundred-and-sixty pound, forty-two-year-old male. Still, you get the exercise done, and I had not wanted to go outside that morning, the dark-before-the-dawn too dark.
    My hand was eager to pick up the phone by reflex. I like answering the phone—I can’t help it. Only as I lifted the instrument to my ear did I think, It’s Detective Margate.
    So I said hello with the phone not very close to my head, creeping up on the conversation.
    It was a male voice, with none of that cop weight.
    It was Quinn. He sounded different after all these months, his voice deeper and even more cautious than I recalled, so my heart didn’t stop all at once.
    â€œJesus, it is you!” I said after he had talked for about half a minute, a prepared speech—Quinn is one of those people so sincere he can’t think of what to say all at once.
    â€œMy dad’s coming to Richmond this afternoon, on business, and I thought I’d like to drop by and see you.” I guessed that this, too, was a memorized statement, but then he said, spontaneously,