Diane Avery never called that late.
My mother believed in routines the way some people believe in luck. Tea at nine. Doors locked by ten. Television off by ten-thirty. She had followed that schedule through illness, through my father’s death, and through the quiet loneliness that settled into her life after her children moved away. Routine was her anchor, the thing that kept her steady when everything else changed. She never strayed from it without a reason, and whenever she did, the change itself carried meaning. So when her name flashed across my phone at one-seventeen in the morning, a cold sense of dread settled in my stomach before I even answered.....