“You really don’t regret it?” I asked him, after a while, looking out at the dark driveway.

“Coming back.

Giving up the service.

All of it.”

Ethan looked up at the stars for a long moment before he answered.

“When I was over there,” he said quietly, “I used to lie awake in my bunk at night, and the thing I was really afraid of — more than anything that could happen to me — was the phone.

I was terrified I’d get a call saying something had happened to you, or to Grandma, while I was on the other side of the planet and could not do one single thing about it.

That fear never left me.