“Hello? Hello? Chase, is that you? Wait, what button did I hit? Did you call me? Or did I call you?” Abigail Blakeman asked, then pulled her phone away from her ear to stare at it. It was new. Not the latest version, of course, because those were expensive and complicated and really more computer than phone. She bought the reasonably priced older version, which would soon be obsolete. It seemed smaller than her last phone. Or her eyes were rapidly deteriorating. Or her joints were swelling. Either way, she was constantly dialing people she didn’t want to speak to and hanging up on people she did want to talk to. She missed landlines.

“I called you, Mom.”

“Well, that’s nice.” And surprising on a Sunday morning. Her eldest child, Chase checked in every few weeks, usually when he was in the back of a car stuck in Manhattan traffic en route to a meeting. The tactic ensured that the call was no more than seven minutes, half of which was Chase giving instructions to the driver. The other half was Chase apologizing for being so busy that he hadn’t had time to call.

Chase was the chief of staff for the Mayor of the City of New York, Timothy “Timmo” Lynch. It was an impressive title and an impressive accomplishment for a B student who’d just turned thirty. Abigail couldn’t stand the mayor even though he was a well-respected Independent who was fiscally conservative and socially progressive. An Irish immigrant, the son of a construction worker and a schoolteacher, young Mayor Lynch had used his University of Galway education, street smarts, and charm to make his way to Harvard for an MBA, then to New York City to build a financial empire. When Timmo decided to trade in his career in finance for a career in politics, the voters fell for this naturalized US citizen with his Irish accent and Gabriel Byrne looks.

Abigail thought the mayor was smug, too charismatic for his own good. And Chase had picked up the same skills, the easy conversation with everyone from world leaders to old ladies, the ability to break down complex ideas into simple, digestible chunks of information. Her son had even started dressing like his boss, in handmade suits when Brooks Brothers’ ready-made suits were perfectly fine. She loved Chase, but she wished he’d find another line of work, maybe even one where no one knew his name. Politics could be so tawdry. You could get dragged through the mud through no fault of your own. Or just a tiny little fault of your own. Why couldn’t he have a high-powered career and make gobs of money, but in something not so objectionable? Like law.

“Are you and Dad around today?”