“…scream,” the woman said. “I was hiding in my parents’ closet, and a man was walking through our house. I wanted to scream so badly. And you said, ‘Breathe in for four. Hold it for four. Breathe out for four. You’re not alone in the dark, sweetheart. I’m right here.’ For ninety minutes, you counted with me. You never hung up.”
The banquet room had gone completely silent. Stuart was still standing with his arms open, but slowly they fell to his sides. The woman went on. “My name is Kathleen Moore. I’m the director of the county’s 911 center now. I trained every dispatcher in the state on that night’s call. We still play the recording in orientation. They call it the Albert Call.”
My father put down his water glass. He looked at his hands. “You were so brave,” he said quietly. “You didn’t make a sound.” Kathleen smiled through her tears. “Because you told me how.”
Then Kathleen turned to my brother. “Stuart, I’ve read your book. Chapter one. The breathing exercise that ‘changed your life.’ Four in, four hold, four out. You wrote that your father taught it to you when you had nightmares as a kid. Did you know where he got it?”
Stuart went pale. He has given that exact exercise in front of thousands of people. He sells it on posters. He calls it the Hartman Method, after our last name. He looked at our father as if he were seeing him for the first time. “Dad,” he said, his voice cracking, “I thought you just… made it up.”
“I did,” Dad said gently. “That night. For her. Then I used it on you.”
Nobody spoke for a while. Then Stuart walked to the front of the room and, instead of making another speech, sat down in the empty chair beside our father and leaned his head against his shoulder, the way he used to when he was little. Mom took a photo of that moment. It’s on the first page of the second edition of Stuart’s book now, with a new dedication underneath: For Dad, who counted in the dark.
