CHAPTER THREE
THE LETTER STAYED on the counter, slipped back into its envelope, and the envelope, in turn, isolated in the biggest ziplock bag I could find. I figured that there was a good chance it was evidence of something, and I didn’t want too much contamination from myself or from my apartment on the thing.
Not that I was about to turn it over to the cops.
Not yet, anyway.
What I did do was grab a beer from the fridge and settle down in front of my TV. I turned it on and it was still having signal difficulties.
“Damn it.”
One would think that with a dozen years working on the signal problems in this city, they could come up with a reliable television. I had paid almost double the national standard to get a TV and satellite hookup that had the custom electronics to work within the Portal’s influence—and the damn thing couldn’t lock on a signal.
I leaned back and sighed.
I couldn’t bitch too much. The Portal’s influence on data transmission was why I had a job in the first place. The interference, the inability to transmit or receive video without special equipment, was why there were no local broadcast or cable TV stations around the Portal. That meant no local TV news. That meant the revival of print journalism to the tune of five local dailies in the Greater Cleveland area along with hundreds of regional weeklies.
TV in northeast Ohio was an elitist luxury.
It was still annoying.
I shut it off again and walked over to the windows. I looked out at the purple sky where a swollen yellow moon competed with the streetlight glare off of Shaker Square. Signal blackouts usually happened because of weather conditions, storms, thick cloud cover . . .
The sky was perfectly clear.
The phone rang.
I walked over and picked up the phone, “Maxwell.”
“Dad?”
“Hey there,” I said, staring up into the cloudless night sky. I effortlessly forgot Mazurich, dwarves, and political conspiracies as I slid into Father mode. Something I’ve gotten a lot better at in the years since me and Margaret split. “All ready for this weekend?”
“More than ready.” I could pick up the exasperation in her voice all the way from California.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“What particular nothing is it this time?”
“Oh, you know, Mom.”
She wasn’t a little girl any more, but I could hear the childlike frustration in her voice—probably half calculated to catch my sympathy. A long veteran of long-distance parenting, I asked, “So, why are you upset with your mother?”
“She can’t stop it with telling me what to do. I’m seventeen, Dad. I’m not a kid who needs to be told how to cross the street.”
“She just worries about you.”
“She’s acting like I’m going into a war zone. Like goblins are going to eat me or something.”
I hoped my sigh wasn’t audible. When the Portal opened up, the whole area was thrown into chaos for a good eighteen months. Everything from power outages and the failure of most of the electronic infrastructure of the city, to a federal blockade and a small invasion by magical critters of every description. It was the story of my career, and I didn’t have the good sense to listen to my wife’s concerns about living in the epicenter of all this. I’ve never been able to blame her for that, which is one of the reasons that up until now every family visit I’ve had involved me buying the ticket.
This time around, though, Sarah had insisted on visiting me. She wanted to see the town where she had been born.
This, of course, drove her mother nuts.
“Sarah, your mother has very bad memories of this place. Try to understand where she’s coming from.”
“She’s being irrational. She wants me to lock myself in your condo until I take my return flight.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”
“You think so? I said I wanted to see the Portal, and she went nuts. She almost tore up my boarding pass . . .”
“Sarah, there’s no reason to bait your mother like that.”
“I have a right to see you, Dad—”
“Correction. I have a right to see you. You have a right to do whatever your parents tell you.”
“Dad.”
“Don’t ‘Dad’ me. Just because your mother has buttons doesn’t mean you have to push them. Just be happy she’s letting you come here for once.”
“Okay, but you don’t have to live with her.”
At this point, that was probably a good thing.
“Anyway, I got a surprise for you, Dad.”
“Oh, what?”
“Hey, that would be telling.”
The paternal instinct kicked in. “Is this a surprise I’m going to like?”
“Uh-huh . . .”
“Why do you sound uncertain about that?”
“It’s just . . . I haven’t told Mom yet.”
Okay, now I was really worried. “Tell me.”
“I wanted to tell you in person—”
“Honey, unless you want me to have nightmares about you eloping with a biker with a ring through his nose, tell me what it is.”
“Ick. Okay, if you promise not to tell Mom.”
“Sarah, you know I—”
“I’m going to tell her, I just need to let her calm down first.”
“What is it?”
“I got an acceptance letter from one of my college applications.”
“Hey, that is good news. Congratulations!” As I said it I began to realize that there was more going on here.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
She sucked in a breath and said, “It was my application to Kent State.”
“You applied to Kent?”
“And Oberlin.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And Antioch, and Case Western . . .” She rattled off a list of a half dozen other schools.
“Is there a university in Northeast Ohio you didn’t apply to?”
“Cleveland State.”
I placed my hand on my forehead. “Did Margaret let you send out those applications?”
“Uh, no.”
“Did she know you applied to these places?”
Silence.
“Honey, you aren’t eighteen, wasn’t a parent supposed to sign your applications?”
“She did . . . sort of.”
“You didn’t forge your mother ’s signature, did you?”
“Not really.”
“Sarah!”
“I filled out a stack of twenty or thirty, Dad. I just slipped a few more in when she was signing them for me. Can I help it if she wasn’t reading closely?”
I tried to stifle a laugh.
“Dad?”
I gritted my teeth and said, “You have until this weekend to come clean with your mother.”
“You’re angry with me?”
“I will be if you continue this feud with your mom. Think of who’s going to be paying for half of this education. She has a right to be part of that decision.”
“You know how she feels—”
“And you’re making assumptions. If you don’t want me talking to your mom, do it yourself. She might surprise you.”
“I doubt it.”
“Perhaps, but you’re a year away from having the right to make those decisions unilaterally.” I walked away from the window, holding the phone.
“Okay, I will.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, I—”
“Honey?”
“—ble hearing you, Dad.” Her voice was small and weak. I could hear the distance in it now.
“I think we’re losing the connection.”
“—is weekend—ve you, Dad.”
“I love you, too.”
A rattle, a hiss, and a shaking dial tone. I turned off the wireless and tossed it on the couch.
“Kent State?” I muttered to myself, smiling. I was going to catch hell from Margaret about this one. She would think I put our daughter up to it. And, knowing my daughter, I doubted that there was anything Margaret would be able to do to keep her from moving up here.
There were God knows how many parents of God knows how many teenagers living perfectly normal lives here. More all the time.
However, despite all the times I had told my ex that things were okay up here, now that the possibility was staring me in the face, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.