I was, that morning, exactly the kind of man who does not answer unknown numbers during critical meetings.

That was not an accident of temperament; it was a discipline I had built on purpose, a rule I was proud of, part of the same apparatus of focus and control that had walled out my grieving wife and my unborn child.

By every logic of the man I had spent forty-three years becoming, I should have let it ring.

If I had, the deal would have closed on schedule.