“I’ll just call him right now and ask.

He said he was waiting on a check from a customer.”

At six o’clock we sat down at the little Formica table with two bowls of hot chili on yellow place mats between us.

Sadie unlocked her phone, dialed her father’s cell and laid it flat on the table, tapping the speaker button before the second ring was over.

Sadie always called Rory on speakerphone.

She’d done it ever since the divorce four years earlier, as if keeping me in the room as a witness would make him stay calm and polite.