Escape Velocity by Robin Stevenson

“She’ll have to deal.” Then his voice softens. “It’s not about you, okay? You’re terrific.”
    â€œDoesn’t seem like she thinks so.”
    â€œLou.” He coughs, clears his throat again. “Your mother is a wonderful person in many ways. But she’s, well, self-centered. To say the least.”
    I’ve never heard him criticize her before. In fifteen years, I have never heard him say a single bad thing about her. “Dad? Do you know anything about Mom’s parents? About her mother?”
    â€œHer parents? Why?”
    â€œI just wondered.”
    â€œI never met them,” he said.
    â€œYeah, but…”
    â€œI know her dad died when she was a teenager. Your age, maybe younger. Car accident, I think it was. Or cancer, maybe. I can’t remember.”
    â€œAnd her mom?”
    â€œShe never talked about her mom,” he said. “The topic was kind of off-limits.”
    â€œWeren’t you curious? I mean, didn’t you think that was kind of odd?”
    â€œZoe was a very private person.” He gives a half-laugh, the kind that means nothing is really funny. “Independent, I guess you could say. Kept people at a bit of a distance. I figured she and her mom weren’t close.”
    â€œYeah, but still. You really don’t know anything about her family at all?”
    â€œNo.” He pauses. “There’s one thing I can tell you. They weren’t wealthy. Or at any rate, they weren’t sharing the wealth if there was any to share. She was putting herself through school. Student loans, two part-time jobs. She was always worried about money.”
    â€œDo you think her parents were—I don’t know— abusive? Or something?”
    â€œI really don’t know, Lou. I don’t remember her ever mentioning anything like that. But we weren’t together all that long. A year, that’s all. I didn’t really know her very well.” He gives a short, bitter laugh. “Obviously.”
    He sounds tired, and I’m worried that talking about my mother is making him unhappy. I should let him go, but I don’t want to put the phone down. I don’t want to give up this long-distance link, this connection through the phone wires to the building where my father is. Once I hang up, I’ll be back in Victoria, alone with Zoe again. “You’re going to be okay, right? Dad? Promise me?”
    â€œI promise,” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

    Zoe lets me use her laptop—for schoolwork, she says— and I spend the evening making a list of soup kitchens and drop-ins and homeless shelters. It’s pretty hopeless. Even after I cross off all the ones that serve only youth or men, there are still a lot of possible places. And I don’t even know if the clapping woman is actually homeless. Maybe she has a skuzzy apartment somewhere with a dozen cats. Maybe she’s just an artsy freak who doesn’t like taking showers or doing laundry.
    â€œI’m ordering take-out,” Zoe calls out. “Is Thai food okay?”
    â€œFine.” I close the laptop as she opens the door to my room. “Anything’s fine.”
    â€œI’m done working for today,” she says, and stretches, catlike.
    Her hair is tied back in a loose ponytail, and she’s wearing flannel pants that say University of Victoria in large letters running down one leg. She looks about twenty, and gorgeous. “Me too,” I say. “I was just emailing Tom.”
    â€œYour poet boyfriend,” she says, smiling. It’s as if this validates me in some way—as if the possibility that some guy likes me makes me a better, more interesting person. “Is he your first real boyfriend?”
    â€œUm, yeah, I guess.” I actually haven’t ever had a boyfriend. Back in eighth grade, when Dad and I lived in Vancouver, there was this older guy called Ken. He played