Follow the Sun. Edward J. Delaney

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      3.

      ON THIS MORNING, AS ON ALL MORNINGS, ROBBIE shuffles on achy legs to the bathroom. He feels as if he’s walking on circus stilts: the plastic folding chair at the scorer’s table granted him no favor. But his post-divorce apartment is small enough to make for brief journeys, in this case back to the kitchen, and thinking only of shaking the grogginess. Winter sports season is the toughest: night games, then at the office later than that, then at the bar later than that. He closed Jack’s last night with the copy editors, feeling as if he’d just gotten there.

      The knock now at his door is too soft to be Quinn’s, whom he assumes to still be sleeping long hours over in his flop. The second knock is even softer now, apologetic if a knock on a door can be so. He opens up a crack, and sees it’s Tina, his niece.

      “Hang on a minute,” he calls through.

      “Okay,” comes her voice, so softened it’s nearly a wraith.

      He goes to the bedroom and pulls on his pants and zips up. Back to the door, she’s still standing there with the same face when he opens it.

      “What’s wrong?” he says.

      “Nothing, at least not urgently,” she says, as he motions her inside.

      “You keep the place clean,” she says.

      “That’s such a surprise?”

      “I guess I don’t expect that from men. How’s your daughter?”

      “Sarah . . .”

      “Right, I knew that. How old is she now?”

      “She’s seven now. She’s good, very good. She’ll be staying with me next weekend.”

      They stand, looking at each other in an awkward interlude.

      “So what can I do for you?” he says, knowing it’s come out sounding all wrong.

      “It’s about my dad.”

      “What else could it have been?” he says.

      “My mom’s been trying to get the money from him.”

      “I need to stay out of their issues,” Robbie says.

      “I’m completely aware.”

      He turns to the counter to retrieve his coffee. “So what do you need from me, then?”

      “This is even more awkward than I thought it would be.”

      Robbie motions for her to sit.

      “I think you know I graduate high school in June,” she says.

      “Of course,” he says, still surprised.

      “I want to go to school in the fall. Just community college. I just need a little money. A loan. Just a little to make it work.”

      “So why aren’t you talking to him?” Robbie says.

      “When have I ever been able to talk to him?”

      “He’s getting better.”

      “I haven’t really talked to him since before he went to prison. That was sort of the end of things. I was only wondering if you might say something.”

      “I’ll try.”

      “Meaning you really won’t?”

      “Meaning I’ll try.”

      “My mother says she could get him thrown in jail.”

      “Your mother knows that would only cost her more money. She pays a lawyer to stick him in jail, he loses the new boat, that’s the end of any more money.”

      “I’m just saying,” she says.

      “He’s trying, honey,” Robbie says. “The man is working his ass off, trust me on that, but the money just isn’t coming in. The going rate on lobster is what it is. And trust me that he isn’t living it up, either. He’s just getting by.”

      “Family Court has a formula.”

      “Family Court doesn’t go a hundred miles out into the ocean, in the winter, trying to survive. Family Court doesn’t control the market price for lobster.”

      She appears to sit in her own thoughts now.

      “You should talk to your father,” Robbie says. “Just to talk.”

      Tina pushes off from the kitchen table, and stands.

      “That’s something I’d have to work up to,” she says.