My 8-year-old adopted granddaughter was left at home while my son and his wife took their biological son. She called me at 2:00 AM crying, ‘Why Grandpa?’ I booked last-minute tickets and within 12 hours we crashed their vacation!

It was not a restful sleep but rather the deep and merciful kind that only arrives after a week has drained every bit of your energy.

At sixty three years old, I no longer slept with the ease of a younger man because my rest came in cautious pieces like a stray cat that might flee at the slightest movement.

I could be exhausted beyond any words and still wake up at the simple tick of the thermostat or the distant bark of a dog two streets away.

That night, I had finally managed to fall into a heavy slumber before the phone glowed white against the blackness of my bedroom in Tallahassee.

Before my mind truly understood what was happening, my body was already bracing for the arrival of terrible news.

Thirty one years as a family attorney had trained me to fear late night calls because experience taught me that nothing ordinary arrives after midnight.

A call at two in the morning is rarely about a birthday or a funny story, as it usually involves a hospital, a jail, or a child in danger.

I reached for my glasses with my left hand and accidentally knocked over the paperback book I had been trying to finish for three weeks.