Chapter 1: The Static on the Line
I answered with a distracted, “Hello?”
The boardroom of my downtown firm was humming with the low, sterile drone of corporate strategy. Spreadsheets bled across the glowing projector screen, and twelve expectant faces waited for me to dissect the quarterly projections. I had my pen poised over a legal pad, ready to dismantle a flawed marketing budget.
For one agonizing second, there was only static on the line. Just the faint, hollow rustle of movement, like someone fumbling with a receiver in the dark.
Then, a voice. Tight, raspy with exhaustion, and terrifyingly small.
“Dad?”
I was on my feet before my conscious brain fully registered the sound. My knee clipped the edge of the mahogany table, sending a tremor through the room, but I didn’t feel it. “Micah? Why are you calling me from a different number? Where’s your mother?”
My six-year-old son sniffed hard. It was that specific, ragged intake of breath children use when they are trying to be brave, usually because they’ve been forced to be brave for far too long.
