T-shirt balled in his free hand and lopsided with pain, he heard Terri's voice. He'd been expecting her call. Had thought about it when he'd lain awake in the night, unable to get back to sleep.

"Sorry, did I get you out of bed?" she cooed at him, and he caught the veiled put-down like a pro baseball player catching a kid's practice throw.

Yeah, Terri, okay, I get it, you think I'm lazy. It was seven-thirty on a New Jersey Monday morning. Terri's new husband, Jay, arose at six every day, went to the gym for an hour, ate a power breakfast and still managed to make a couple of billion dollars by lunch.

"Out of the shower," he told her, after a silence that lasted a fraction too long. His side was still burning and he couldn't be bothered attempting to change what his ex-wife thought of him.

What she thought of him had become pretty clear during the process of their divorce.

The only thing that mattered in their relationship anymore was Ryan, and he mattered down to the marrow of Jack's bones. Ryan came first.

He took some cautious breaths and paced up and down the splintered old hardwood floor, willing the pain to ebb. What had he done in there? Ripped open his stitches? Did the agony show in his voice?

Terri knew that he'd just come out o