“Not once.

It’s been almost fifteen hours, Liam.

Your daughter was in a hospital.

And the first thing you want to know is what happened to the furniture.” He brushed straight past it, as though I had not spoken, as though our sick child were an inconvenient subject to be steered around, and moved on to what actually occupied him.

And I want to be fair, even now, and say that I gave him, in that call, one more opening than he deserved.

When I told him he had not asked about Hazel, I paused, and I left a silence, and I waited to see whether the fact of it would land, whether some belated instinct would kick in and he would say, oh God, you’re right, is she okay, tell me what happened.