“Are you alone?”
The question landed strangely in my chest, colder somehow than the rain still falling around me. “Yes,” I said, my voice thinner than I wanted it to be, scraped raw from crying. “Noah, what’s going on? Why are you calling at this hour—”
“I need you to stay calm.” He said it too fast, the words tumbling over each other in a way I’d never once heard from him. Noah had handled my father’s affairs for as long as I could remember, had sat across from me at a hundred meetings with his tie always straight and his voice always level, even the week my father was in the ICU fighting for his life.
I had never heard him sound like this. Rattled. Almost frightened.
“You’re scaring me,” I said, and I hated how small my own voice sounded saying it.
“I received a call an hour ago.” A
