“You’re a thirty-three-year-old man with a college degree and a sick four-month-old child,” I said.

“You tell him you’re staying home.

It isn’t a request.”

He pulled his hands back into his lap and rubbed his palms back and forth over his knees, his knuckles white.

“And after you call Alan,” I said, “you’ll call your mother.”

Ethan swallowed hard, his throat moving against his shirt collar.

“Sylvia?”

“You’ll call Sylvia on speakerphone,” I said.