kitchen table with a paper coffee cup gone cold, answering questions that should have belonged to her son.
“Are you even listening to me?” he demanded.
“Yes,” I said.
The woman near him laughed again, lower this time, as if someone had leaned close and whispered into her ear.
Christopher covered the phone for a moment, but not quickly enough.
When he came back, his voice had changed.
It was softer, almost patient, the voice he used when he wanted to make cruelty sound reasonable.
“I can’t keep dropping everything
