“Keep my hands where they can see them.”
“Don’t argue.”
“Get home first.”
Jordan nodded.
The student looked toward the empty lecture hall.
“I hate when he says it.”
“I did too.”
“Did you stop hating it?”
Jordan considered.
“No.”
The student looked surprised.
Jordan continued.
“I understood why he said it.”
“That’s different.”
The student nodded slowly.
Then:
“Was he scared when he saw you?”
Jordan thought about Nathan standing ten feet away in the park.
Charcoal suit.
Credential still hidden.
Face almost expressionless.
At nineteen, Jordan had interpreted that expression as control.
Much later he understood it was control over terror.
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
The student waited.
Jordan continued.
“Years after.”
“Not that day.”
“My father spent most of his career dealing with dangerous people.”
“Armed people.”
“Organized crime.”
“National-security cases.”
“Situations where people threatened him.”
“He said seeing me on the ground scared him in a completely different way.”
“Why?”
“Because everything he knew how to do professionally suddenly became dangerous.”
The student frowned.
Jordan explained.
“If he acted like FBI, people could accuse him of abusing his title.”
“If he acted like a father, he could escalate the sergeant.”
“If he moved too quickly, Mercer might have reacted to him instead of me.”
“So he stood there trying to be two people at the same time.”
The student looked down.
Jordan smiled sadly.
“Parents do that more often than we notice.”
That evening Jordan called Nathan.
Nathan was seventy-five.
Retired.
More stubborn than ever.
His hearing was worse but he refused to admit it.
The phone rang three times.
“What?”
Jordan laughed.
“You know most people say hello.”
“Most people call before dinner.”
“It’s four-thirty.”
“Exactly.”
Jordan could hear a television in the background.
His father had become obsessed with baseball after retirement despite spending most of Jordan’s childhood claiming sports broadcasts wasted time.
Jordan asked:
“Do you remember telling me you were scared in the park?”
Silence.
Then:
“You gave a lecture today.”
Jordan laughed.
“How did you know?”
“You only call with philosophical questions after lectures.”
Jordan sat on the edge of his desk.
“A student asked.”
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth.”
Nathan grunted.
“Dangerous habit.”
Jordan smiled.
Then Nathan became quieter.
“You know what I remember?”
“What?”
“The coffee.”
Jordan froze.
“Seriously?”
“It was everywhere.”
Nathan continued.
“Your sweatshirt.”
“Grass.”
“The sidewalk.”
“I remember thinking somebody had hurt you badly enough that blood was on the ground.”
Jordan had never known that.
He said:
“It was coffee.”
“I know that now.”
Nathan’s voice changed.
“For maybe two seconds, I didn’t.”
Jordan looked toward the window.