Not anymore.

“You can call your mother from a hotel room, Julian,” I said.

And I reached over to my desk, and I picked up a thin manila folder, and his thumb stopped, hovering over his phone screen.

“What is that?” he asked.

And I understood, watching his face, that some animal part of him had already grasped that the folder was the true center of the room, that everything else, the cleared living room, the night nurses, the trust, had been prelude, and that whatever was inside that folder was the thing that would determine the rest of his life.

Chapter 13 — Two Choices