Chapter 4
Six weeks after Danny goes to Montana, Eve is on an excruciatingly slow jog along the water when she gets a call. She drops her phone in her enthusiasm to answer it—human contact!—and then of course it declines the call.
“Hi,” Danny says when Eve calls back.
“Hi! Sorry, dropped my phone in a puddle.” Eve ducks under the nearest awning as the rain continues to spit. “How are you?”
“I love it,” Danny says. “POSTLAPSARIAN.”
“You listened?”
“Are you kidding? My dad and I have it on repeat. He loves ‘NORTHLORE.’ ”
“Wow,” Eve says. “That’s a deep cut for the true fans. How’s he doing?”
“He’s . . . okay.”
“I can get on a flight today.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I just keep hoping he’ll open up to me. I don’t know. I just wish I could get him to tell me about my mom. Like, how did they even meet? What was he like when he was young? I don’t even know.” Danny clears his throat. “Anyway. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Everything okay?”
“Kind of. I mean. I found something.”
“What does that mean?”
“We had this issue with accounts that were connected to multiple other accounts. Cheating, basically.”
“Who’s stupid enough to join a relationship app with someone they’re cheating with?”
“Well,” Danny says. There is a long pause, leaving Eve more than enough room to draw her conclusions. “More people than you’d expect. Namely—”
“Oh,” Eve says. “Oh. My dad.”
“Wow. Yes. You don’t sound surprised.”
Eve taps the toe of her running shoe against the wet pavement. The reflection is gauzy, streaked. A subway rumbles past in the distance; its brakes shriek. “I’m not. I always figured my dad had affairs.”
“Was it the right thing for me to tell you? I didn’t want to have this huge thing I knew about your family.”
“Danny, of course. It’s fine.”
“Are you going to talk to them about it? Either of them?”
“Oh, probably not.”
“Maybe you could?”
“What good could possibly come of that?”
“Maybe they’re lonely,” Danny says.
“I’m sure they are. They’re not particularly nice people.”
“Eve,” he says, and his voice sounds thready. “They’re right uptown.”
Eve stills. She presses the heel of her hand to her chest. Exhales.
On the other side, in the background, she hears Cal say something.
“Be right there,” Danny calls back. His tone is changed entirely—upbeat for Cal. It’s a good act. Almost believable. “Hey, Eve?”
“Yeah. I’ll let you go.”
“You and me,” he says.
“The real deal,” she says.
“They’re always saying that.”