Free You Don't Love This Man by Dan Deweese Page A

living?”
    â€œAs far as I know.”
    â€œSurely you would know if one of your parents had died.”
    If I hadn’t been medicated, or maybe if I had just been older than twenty-three and not so quickly cowed by authority, I might have corrected him. My mother was in Florida, and yes, I spoke to her on the phone once every couple months. She had raised me in New Mexico, though, and the man she married when I was in high school—I never called him my stepfather—would certainly have called me if something happened to her. My father, on the other hand, had moved to Minnesota when I was in middle school. A self-taught cook who called himself a chef, he had never beenmarried to or lived with my mother, and when a friend of his convinced him they were going to get rich taking over a failing restaurant in St. Paul, he went for it. The restaurant failed anyway, but he then picked up a job cooking somewhere in Wisconsin. After that he moved every year or two, usually after the restaurant in which he was working shut its doors. Never back to New Mexico, though. I saw him once a year, when he would come to town for a few days to see how much I’d grown, and to assure me that his was not the life he had planned, but the breaks had been bad. It had been almost a year since I had last spoken to him, and if he were to die, whether anyone presiding over the details of his death would know how to contact me—or would even know of my existence—was far from certain. But I was medicated and tired, and that all seemed too much to try and communicate. So what I ended up saying was “We’re not completely out of touch. But they’re thousands of years from here.”
    The detective tapped his pad thoughtfully. “I don’t know what that means,” he said.
    â€œMy mother is in Florida and my dad is somewhere else. I’m not sure.”
    â€œBut you said they were thousands of years away. So you were being poetic?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I meant miles. I’m on medication and it’s mixing up my words.” I collected myself, and made sure to slowly and correctly say: “I’m just not in regular contact with them.”
    â€œHmm. Estranged, then,” the detective said, making a notation in his pad with all the care and attention of someone filling in a crossword puzzle. Did he really write estranged ? I have, over the years, sometimes wondered if he actually wrote anything at all.
    From beyond the room’s closed door came the muffled, mellowwarning tones of the public address system followed by a woman’s voice calmly announcing, Dr. Murphy, code orange. Dr. Murphy, code orange . I straightened my sheet and blanket, wondering if orange meant someone was dying. Buckle stood in front of the window, tapping his cigarette against his lips. Then, as if he’d settled on something, he jotted another note in his pad.
    â€œDid you need to know anything about the robbery itself?” I said.
    â€œNo,” he said. “You told me all of that the other day. You were generous and expansive. I think I have everything I need.” He flipped his notepad closed then, and thanked me for my time and effort as he headed toward the door.
    â€œThe things I’ve told you are confidential, right?” I said.
    He smiled, though whether out of benevolence or amusement, I couldn’t tell. “Of course,” he said. “Everything is strictly confidential. It’s the only way.”
    He disappeared into the hall then, leaving me alone, and surrounded by my flowers. There were so many in that small room that I couldn’t help but feel like the star attraction at a funeral.
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    I HAD SETTLED INTO one of the chairs in the customer waiting area and was pretending to read one of our procedures manuals—and pretending not to be growing more and more desperate and angry about being stuck there—when Catherine, at her desk,