Orin calls about Separatism
Hal estimated over 60% of what he told Orin on the phone since Orin had abruptly started calling again this spring was a lie.
Context
The estranged eldest son's total severance from the family is the unspoken architecture of the whole call. Orin, who fled to Phoenix and cut contact, phones only Hal — never Avril, never C.T. — and the tell surfaces when he floats a joke E.T.A. business venture: "That of course would mean actually contacting C.T. and the Moms," Hal notes, and the sentence lands like a wall, the two names Orin will not dial. Hal is the single surviving conduit between Orin and the family he has otherwise erased. And even that lone thread runs on falsehood: Hal lies about "over 60%" of what he says, and "had no idea why he liked lying to Orin on the phone so much." The family's one open line between its most estranged member and the rest is kept open by a brother who mostly lies down it — connection preserved precisely because nothing true has to pass through it. Orin can stay in touch only with the member he can deceive.