RAY WOKE UP alone, or at least, alone in the bed. The sound of shuffling down the hall indicated Cal was moving around not very far away. The room and the hall were still dark. Cal was speaking quietly, leaving a message.
“So, since you haven’t picked up and it’s gone to straight to voicemail again, I assume you’ve lost your phone or your charger somewhere. I’d tell you to ask Randolph, but by the time you get this, you’ll have fixed the problem. Anyway,” Cal’s tone was not as breezy as he likely meant it to be, like his agitated pacing and soft whisper, it gave away more than it concealed, “when you get this, please call me. I’d… I’d really like to talk to you.”
He must have ended the call, because the house was silent for several moments except for Cal’s shaky breathing.
Ray flung off the covers Cal had thrown over him and had just sat up when Cal started speaking again, as if he’d made another call he hadn’t wanted Ray to hear.
“Yeah, kid?”
The answer on the other end seemed to surprise Cal, who said nothing immediately, and then only,
“Why are you up?”
“It’s not as late as you think it is, even for us older humans,” Calvin Parker replied without any obvious sarcasm. “Is he worse?”
Ray put his feet on the floor but didn’t move from the bed.
Cal let out another shaky breath. “Of course you heard.”
“Should I come over?”
The house was briefly silent again.
“Yeah,” Cal finally answered, with a sigh. “But not now. It’s late.”
Calvin’s scoff was perfectly audible. “Late nights are nothing to an old detective like me.”
There was a thump; Cal sitting abruptly or maybe falling against something. “You were too young to have retired from a job you loved like you did.”
“Now I’m young?” Calvin wondered, but didn’t dwell on it. “I only loved parts of that job. Maybe just the idea of it, in the end.” He cleared his throat. “I had my reasons to go. It didn’t suit me anymore, for one. And they certainly made it easy for me to walk away.”
Cal took a moment, another breath. “Tomorrow is fine, Dad. Really. I… I tried calling Mom, but her phone….”
“I’ll come see you tomorrow,” Calvin offered smoothly. “I’ve got nothing scheduled that can’t be moved, no appearances or anything. And we have a few days until the fundraiser, and those details, I’m happy to say, are someone else’s problem. I’m grateful for it, to be honest. The whole thing is a little unnerving. I’m used to a much different audience.”
Calvin Parker had never been easily unnerved. Ray raised his eyebrows.
Cal hardly seemed fazed. “It’ll be fine. They love you and you know it. You’ll be fielding off proposals and propositions. Well, I’ll be there to do it for you,” he corrected, with a snotty sniff. “Oryou could just call her.”
“Stop deflecting, kid.”
Ray didn’t know whether to frown at Calvin’s implied reprimand or be impressed at how it made Cal huff but stop pushing.
Well, notstop. Just redirect.
“Did you like it when Mom came into the station to see you? Oh,” Cal punctuated his own question with a surprised noise. “I didn’t mean to ask that. Not now, anyway.”
Ray imagined Calvin’s house was just as quiet as theirs. Calvin was considering his answer carefully, or, something Ray would have thought improbable several years ago, he was taking a while to compose himself before he spoke because he was overwhelmed with emotion.
“I loved seeing her.” Just that, plain and true, and it briefly took Cal’s breath away. Ray curled a hand into the bedding. Calvin, unaware of any of that, continued, measured and calm, or, if he was anything like Ray, pretending to be. “I didn’t like watching her facing down all that. The smirks. The leers. Sometimes contempt. I remember the name of every single person who insulted her. I outlasted most of them, outshone the rest.”
It didn’t sound like Cal’s wings were moving. Cal was a few unsteady breaths and a too-quick heartbeat.
His whisper was fast and even softer than before. “Did you ever tell her not to come in?”
Calvin did not ask why his son wanted to know any of this. He sighed, possibly shifted the phone to a new hand, and then said, slowly, perhaps reluctantly, “I asked if she wanted not to a few times… many times. But I’m not a werewolf alone in that department except for one other being. I suspect that matters, too, in whatever you’re thinking. It can’t be easy for him to see, smell, hear you experience all that just because you love him.”
Cal was soquiet. Ray had only known him for two days and he hated the silence from him. He clenched his jaw so he wouldn’t tear the duvet to shreds, and that only because seeing that damage would worry Cal more. A were should control himself, even here, in his home with his Callalily.
