You hate talk­ing with fa­thers. You hated talk­ing with your fa­ther. Well, some­times. You can’t re­mem­ber. It’s been years.

You say so.

He makes some com­ment about your age. Is he im­ply­ing some­thing? What­ever.

Per­haps he did­n’t like you telling him you hated talk­ing with him. That’s the prob­lems with fa­thers. You can never tell what’s both­er­ing them. They hide every­thing.

What’s he mum­bling about now? He seems rather dis­traught. Is he that in­sulted?

Oh, it’s about the boy. Well, why’s he yelling at you about it? It’s not like you killed him! You’re not re­ally the killing type. You’re more the type to fake a death. You’ve done so once, and it gets old fast.

You ask him why he’s telling you any of this bor­ing stuff. He’s rather stunned.

“You—but you’re The De­tec­tive!”

You’re very glad he’s able to grasp the ob­vi­ous, but wish he would get to the point.

“I got home, and he was ly­ing there, all—”

You tire of this. You’ve heard the story a thou­sand times. Ac­tu­ally, you’ve never heard it, but you know it any­way. So… bor­ing. You wish you were re­spon­si­ble. Surely you’d come up with some­thing more… com­pelling.

The de­tec­tive next to you asks the fa­ther if he and the boy have had any fights. The typ­i­cal slight hes­i­ta­tion, and then a de­nial.

Of course there were fights. Not like any­one could pos­si­bly stand to be around a fa­ther so in­sipid and dense, could they?

He’s ly­ing. You say so.

He sput­ters. Spit­tle flies, and it’s a lit­tle dis­gust­ing. He seems a bit sur­prised by it, but it amuses you, and you laugh.

Now he looks a bit up­set.

You al­ways make him up­set.