“Sadie, put your father on the phone,” I said.

“He said not to bother them at dinner,” she whispered, her voice sinking lower.

“I only wanted to tell you about the gray boxes.”

I went back up to my room on the seventh floor and sat down at the desk with my laptop open.

The room cost ninety-five dollars a night more than the budget allowed, and the climate unit held it at a dry seventy-two degrees.

I opened the home security app on my phone to look at the outside perimeter cameras.