Father Michael

by Kevin Egan

About the Author: Kevin Egan, a retired state court employee, is the author of 38 short stories, 17 of which have appeared in AHMM. He is also the author of eight novels, including the noir-ish legal thriller Midnight, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013.

Excerpt

My dad could sell anything, especially to my mom. Strangely enough, he didn’t work in sales but as a bookkeeper for a company that offered everything from construction to carting. I would imagine him perched on a stool, Cratchit-like, with his green visor attached to his forehead and his sleeves cinched by garters, saying little and lifting his eyes from his ledger book only to listen to the cross-talk between the bosses. At home, he was the exact opposite. He would regale Mom and me with big ideas and even bigger plans: the house we would buy, the cars we would drive, the vacations we would take. There was no timetable for these plans. Any one of them just as easily could happen tomorrow as ten years from now. Or never. But we listened and in some corner of our minds we reserved a tiny space for unlikely possibility.

And then one night, without any warning, Dad sat down at the kitchen table, loosened his garters, shook out his sleeves, and announced he had bought a farm.

“You what?” said Mom.

“I bought a farm,” he said, smiling. “Just south of the Finger Lakes. I wired the down payment today.”

The smile melted from his face, which happened whenever he sensed a certain feeling radiating off Mom.

“And when were you going to tell me?” she said, though I could see a crinkle in her eyes, which was the tip of giddiness breaking through her stern surface.

“I just did,” said Dad.

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