I let the phone ring three times.

Not because I enjoyed it, but because after sixty-eight years I had learned that silence is sometimes the only language arrogant people understand.

On the fourth ring, I answered.

“Gloria Sutter,” I said.

For half a second, there was only breathing.

Heavy, sharp, panicked breathing, the kind a man makes when the floor beneath him has begun to crack and he hasn’t yet accepted that he is falling.

“What did you do?” Trevor asked.