a phone call that had frightened him.
Vanessa had contacted him several days earlier.
She had been crying, he said, and asked to speak with him privately. She told him she was dealing with a serious personal problem and didn’t know how to tell the family.
He had initially refused to get involved without speaking to me.
But Vanessa had begged him to give her a little time.
“She said she wasn’t ready for you to know,” Eliam explained. “She was afraid of how you would react.”
I stared at
