Nora’s stepfather, Steve, usually called around nine. Whatever breaking news hit first always made him angry, and he had to share. Steve usually called several times to update her on the latest panic of the day from his breaking news alerts, but today, there was silence.
At first, Nora checked online to make sure the news was still breaking. In the same way it always does, small skirmishes were leading the top news sites to make bold claims about the heavyweight battles taking place in the country’s politics. Additionally, the usual suspects of war, weather and Wall Street kept the breaking news steady.
Finally, at lunch, Nora was concerned enough to call her stepfather.
“Oh, hi, Nora,” Steve said, answering the phone. “I’m just at the park feeding ducks. I’ll check in with you later.”
Nora got off the phone and was more perplexed. Steve was not one to feed the ducks—getting him to leave the house was a struggle most days.
Nora went about her day, and at about five o’clock, Steve called her again.
“Hi, Nora,” he said. “We did not really talk much today, so I wanted to check in.”
“Everything is fine here,” Nora said. “You usually call to update me on the news.”
“I guess no news is good news,” Steve said with a chuckle. Then he paused on the other end of the line. “Actually, hold on a second. Nora, my phone has been on silent today. Now I’m reading through my alerts. You won’t believe what we missed, Nora!”