He’d driven fourteen hours straight from the oil field outside Williston without stopping to sleep.

He sat down in the wooden armchair across from my desk and buried his face in both hands.

“I shouldn’t have talked to you like that from North Dakota,” he said.

His voice was rough from diesel fumes and stale coffee.

I sat in my desk chair, rubbing my right thumb over my knuckles as I watched him.

“You yelled over the phone because you were trying not to hear what I was saying,” I said.

He lowered his hands, his eyes red-rimmed under the brim of his grease-stained cap.