She had spent enough years knowing his voice to hear all the ways it could change, angry, defensive, defeated, the particular hollow sound it got when he was lying to himself about something. This was none of those. This was she didn't have an immediate word for it, but clearer, maybe. The way water sounds when it's running over clean rock.
Hey, she said. I'm in Sacramento, he said. I took the 99. I should be there and Reuben fixed the car.
It runs good now. I should be there in about an hour. A pause. If that's okay.
Deja looked at Rosie who had smeared oatmeal on her chin and was regarding it with scientific interest. "It's okay," she said. "I have some things to tell you," Leo said. "A lot of things, things that happened I can explain everything but not on the phone.
I need to I need to tell you in person." "Leo?" "Yeah." "Just drive safe," she said. "She's going to want to meet you." The line was quiet for a moment then "I know." His voice when it came was compressed in the way voices get when someone is holding more than their throat can comfortably carry. "I'm going to be different. I know you've heard that before and I know I know what it costs when it doesn't turn out to be true.
But something happened. Something changed something in me." He paused. "I met someone who showed me what it looks like when a man has made up his mind about what kind of person he is and it clarified things." Deja was quiet for a moment. She looked at Rosie.
Rosie looked back with her father's eyes dark and direct and already at eight months carrying a depth that made Deja's chest ache with something that was equal parts love and worry and fierce uncompromising hope. "Drive safe," Deja said again and this time it meant more than it had the first time. The twist that nobody saw coming arrived on a Friday. It came in the form of a man named Gerald Fitch, a 41-year-old investigative journalist at a Sacramento paper who had been covering predatory lending operations in the Central Valley for 3 years.