Part Six: Ozella

My former mother-in-law called me on the Wednesday afternoon, day four, while I was in the hospital cafeteria.

Ozella Gaddis is seventy and I had never in six years of marriage heard her raise her voice, and she did not raise it then.

I put the phone on the table and pressed record before I answered, which is legal in Texas — one party to a conversation may record it — and which I did not do because I am clever.

I did it because my attorney in the divorce three years earlier had told me to record every interaction with that family, and I had done it for three years, and by then it was a reflex like putting on a seatbelt.