Part One: 2:13

My phone rang at thirteen minutes past two in the morning and my son’s name was on it, and I want to record that my first reaction was irritation.

That is the truth and I have never dressed it up.

Toby was fourteen and in his second year of boarding at a school forty minutes east of us, and he had a phone, and boys of fourteen do not have a sense of time, and my genuine first thought at 2:13 on a Thursday morning was what has he broken.

I was in the kitchen.

I had been in the kitchen since about one because I do not sleep well and have not since my father died, and I was at the island with a cold cup of tea and the fourth revision of a set of drawings for a library conversion in Tremont.

I answered it and said, “Toby, it’s two in the—”

And he said: “Mom.

Listen.

Turn the power off at the box and go and hide in Grandad’s room and do it right now.”

I have listened to that recording since.

My son’s voice is not shouting.

It is pitched very low and it is completely steady until the last three words, and then it comes apart slightly on right now.

“Toby, what—”

“Don’t argue.

Please don’t argue with me.

Turn the power off and go in Grandad’s room and don’t come out and do not trust Dad.”

“Toby—”