It was the tone of
her voice, not his name, that cut through his concentration.
“Clem?”
Nothing unusual
about his daughter calling him by his name, something she'd done
since learning it as a child. He loved how it sounded spoken in the
soft contralto she'd inherited from her mother. Ordinarily she said
“Clem” with an easy affection that rarely failed to slip under
the crusty exterior that kept most people wary in his presence. This
time was different.
“Clem?”
She so seldom put
the little interrogative curl at the end when saying his name that
doing so now, especially with a heightened volume, conveyed an
urgency that was equally unusual for her. Yet, he hesitated. Focused
so intensely on a scene in the mystery novel he was writing, he
needed stages of disengagement to break free. Part of his brain was
calculating the degree of urgency represented by his daughter's not
rapping on the door. He took a deep breath and stepped back from his
laptop.
“Daddy!”
“Yes, Mary Beth.
Come in.”
The door started to
open, tentatively. He took the knob and tugged it enough to reveal
his daughter, whose beauty struck him, as it often did, with its
startling resemblance to her mother's when they'd met. Her radiant
face was composed and serious.
“It's Randy. He
said he'll call you from the cabin. Sounded urgent.”
“Thanks,
Sweetheart. Can you find my secure phone? It should be in the desk,
top left drawer.”
Clement Botticelli
returned to his laptop, looked at the screen briefly and saved what
he'd written. He closed it then, knowing he was finished for the day.
The throwaway
cellphone twittered less than a minute after Mary Beth brought it to
him. He'd moved to the recliner next to the dresser where when he
worked on his novel he wrote standing.
Yeah.
