He calls you

 

on New Year's Eve. There's such a long silence on the phone after you pick it up that you assume automatically it's an obscene call and you get ready to slam the phone down at the first hint of audible breathing. It's an unusually silent pause, though, with just a hint of rushing white noise at the back of it that suggests, maybe, a trans-continental phone call, so you hang on.

"I think Jake's flipped," he says, finally.

Jule's father can't speak--he's hooked up to a respirator and he's in traction--but he can scratch out messages on a little slate strapped to the side of the bed. When Luke went to see him, he'd struggled to chalk out a message.

I think I'll go take a walk and get my paper, he'd written.

"He's cracking up," Luke says.

 

Then it hits you