Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

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I got the call a little after four in the morning. Trouble. At that time it had to be trouble, I thought groggily as I reached out to stop the damned cell phone beeping. I remembered I was on vacation, so the call couldn’t be coming from the station. No, at this time it had to be family. Sondra, my wife, was muttering something in her sleep. Ashley and Jason, our two kids just pushing into their teens, were in their rooms down the hall. My mother, then. Or one of my sisters. Or... and I picked it up to hear that familiar scratchy voice rasping, “Gilbert, I need to see you.”

“Now?” I said, hearing in my own voice the whiny kid she always managed to bring out in me.

“Of course now! You think I’d call you this early in the morning if I didn’t want to see you now?”

“But, Vo, it’s four o’clock.”

“Young people sleep too much, Gilbert. You get to be my age, you begin to see what a waste of time all that sleeping is.”

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