The shareholders' meeting was the kind of thing I couldn't cancel, not with the quarterly numbers I needed to present and half the board already circling questions about my recent absences from the office. I sat at the head of the table, half listening to the CFO walk through projections, my mind twelve miles away in a hospital exam room where Becky had taken Micah for his follow-up bloodwork.
My phone was face down on the table, against every rule of etiquette I usually held myself to in these meetings. I'd told Ryder to call if anything happened. Anything at all.
It rang halfway through the second presentation, and I had it to my ear before the first ring finished.
"Adrian." Becky's voice, shaking so hard I almost didn't recognize it. Behind her I could hear Micah crying, a thin, frig
