I let the call ring out.

Then I turned my phone face-down, and went back to watching my children breathe.

I understood, not answering, that I was doing something Flynn had never once in his life had done to him, and that it would wound him more than any words could.

I was declining to engage.

All his power, in the end, had been a kind of gravity that only worked when other people entered his field — when they wanted something from him, feared him, needed his approval or his money or his mercy.

Take away their need and the gravity had nothing to pull on.