Maya, still held against my chest, had gone quiet and heavy, and I realized she was beginning to drift toward sleep, lulled by the warmth and the motion, one small fist still knotted in my collar.

I stood in that institutional hallway with a county desk phone pressed to my ear and my sister’s daughter sleeping against me, though I did not yet know how to say those words even inside my own head, and I listened to the ringing and felt nine years of silence stretched thin along the line.

The phone rang a second time, and a third.

I found myself, absurdly, hoping he would not answer, so that I could hang up and pretend I had never called and go back to being a man with no one to phone at moments like this.