“I had my first child tonight,” I said.

“A boy.”

Andrew wasn’t my uncle by blood.

He’d been my father’s partner and closest friend for thirty years, the man who’d taught me to ride a bike in a company parking lot while our fathers argued numbers upstairs, the one who’d stood beside me at the funeral when I couldn’t make my legs hold me.

When I walked away from that world I’d walked away from him too, a little, the way you avoid the people who remind you of a grief you’re trying to outrun.

Six years of silence, and he answered on the third ring at one in the morning as if he’d been sitting up waiting for the call the whole time.