“He’s my boss, not my family.”

He unlocked the screen again without pausing for breath and opened his recent calls.

He tapped his mother’s name and set the phone back down in the middle of the wooden table.

Sylvia answered on the very first ring, her voice bursting through the speaker with breathless urgency.

“Ethan?” she said, her voice quick and high-pitched.

“Are you at your office yet?

Did you sleep at all?