It wasn’t the sound of his mother’s voice, flinty with distress though it was, that jarred him. Trick wasn’t even surprised to learn that she had phoned him from a hospital. Her health had been less than excellent for at least three years, which by coincidence overlapped his time living away from her home state of Indiana. He didn’t believe the events were related, no matter how much of a ribbing he had taken from her for the move.
The surprise was that his mother was not the one who needed to be in a hospital. “I was on his case for some time about this,” Monifa…
