I didn’t sleep that night. I had far too much to do. By ten the next morning, everything was done but the phone calls.

“Hello, this is Amanda speaking.”

“This is Gil.” My voice came out rushed. Impatience hummed along my spine like a high-voltage wire.

“I noticed you’re running late to work today?”

“I’m not coming in.”

My boss squawked an artificial laugh. “You’ve never taken a day off.”

“I’m going to be gone more than a day.”

I heard the clickclickclick of her pen tapping against the handset. “How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ll need to fill out a vacation request—”

“The laptop broke.”

“What?”

“The company laptop. It fell. It broke. I’m sorry. Goodbye.”

I slammed down the receiver. The simmering rage of eight years was coming to a boil, the rage of sitting and waiting, of ignorance and impotence, of having to perform the mummery of mundane tasks when my son was out there, somewhere, far from me. Almost there, I told myself. Almost there.

Two more calls. These would be much, much harder.