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had been the only call Brett had returned.
    The Jetway moved toward the plane. He could see it through the window and stood, phone still to his ear, and with his free hand, retrieved his bags from the overhead bin and put them on the seat beside him.
    Message three was from Detroit. A call he’d been expecting. A follow-up with a nonprofit museum he’d toured the morning before, confirming their desire to acquire his services and give him a seat on their board.
    He didn’t really have time in his schedule, but the museum was a hands-on science, music and technology facility that could make a real difference with the next generation of Detroit leaders. And their meeting schedule mostly coincided with the Washington, DC, group so he could make both with one trip.
    The fourth message came up as, with his one free hand, he slung his bags over his shoulders, and picked up his briefcase. A confirmation of a haircut appointment he had the next morning. He nodded at the captain and the flight attendant standing in the open doorway of the cockpit as he disembarked, and was almost to the gate and that much closer to his car when he heard the fifth message.
    “A front-yard sprinkler head sprung. George fixed it.”
    He didn’t wait for the click he knew would follow. His mother took good care of him. He’d come up with the plan shortly after he’d sold the dot-com and finalized details for The Lemonade Stand. His mother liked to take care of people. And he’d banked on the fact that if she thought he really needed her, she wouldn’t be able to say no. He couldn’t travel as much as he did, and focus on the job as he needed to do, without having someone to take care of his private business matters for him—including his charity work. And he valued his privacy—as she valued hers. She’d understand that he didn’t want a stranger managing his affairs.
    His plan had worked. She’d agreed almost without hesitation. Through email. And the setup had backfired, too.
    She took care of him. She just wouldn’t see him. Or have a back-and-forth, two-way conversation with him. She knew his schedule and tended to his home when he wasn’t there. And if she needed his input, or to relay information, she texted him. Or emailed. Or left the occasional voice message.
    The one concession she’d made a few years ago, when he’d threatened to hire someone else to care for him, was to give him access to her home so that he could help her, too. But even then, she’d extracted a promise from him that if her car was there, he wasn’t to enter.
    She didn’t trust herself to see him. To get caught up in a relationship with him. And then turn on him again. Her fears were likely groundless. And the walls they built around her sky high.
    After more than thirteen years of her personal silence, Brett was beginning to accept that some things were never going to change.
    * * *
    A S IT TURNED OUT, Ella drove Nora to The Lemonade Stand as soon as she got off work that afternoon. The vulnerable young mother had asked if she could stay with her son until then. She hadn’t wanted to go with a stranger—a member of the Stand staff who’d been planning to come get her—and because hospital security had already had to call the police on Ted, who was in custody, there was no harm in Ella leaving the hospital alone with Nora.
    No risk of them being waylaid or followed by an irate husband. Not that night. As soon as Ted was arraigned, or had hired an attorney, he’d be out of jail. He hadn’t hurt anyone—this time. He’d just refused to leave the hospital without his wife and had been arrested for trespassing.
    And after that night, Ella could come and go as she pleased. Ted had never met her. Had no idea a member of the hospital staff, or anyone else for that matter, was helping his wife pull off her rebellion, and he was no longer allowed access to the NICU. At least not for the next week. The restraining order Nora and her infant son had been