Dame Judith Underdunk was alone in her dark penthouse apartment, watching old VHS tapes of televised Shakespeare plays in which she had acted. She'd watched these tapes so many times that the quality had greatly deteriorated, but Judith could quote them by heart. The tape she currently watched was a production of King Lear, in which she had played Lear's wicked daughter Regan.
A certain line in the play felt particularly personal for Judith, the famous "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"
Judith did indeed have two thankless sons, who were ungrateful for all of the opportunities their parents had provided for them with their money and influence. Judith and Robert Sr. had paid for their sons' private school and for their university educations, but their sons' potentials had been wasted and the family disgraced. Bob had ruined his life with his obsession to beat an asinine clown and a young child, and Cecil had ruined himself with his obsession to outshine Bob as the more successful criminal genius. Now Cecil was in prison and Bob was a fugitive.
The phone rang, which made Judith jolt a little. Who could be calling at this hour? Certainly not her estranged husband, or Cecil. Probably a telemarketer, or an obscene call.
The phone continued to ring until Judith unplugged it and went to bed. The next day, after getting her mail, Judith went through the usual bills and things when she saw a red envelope that made her gasp: it had Bob's elegant and exquisitely legible cursive writing. She opened the envelope with shaking hands, and the single sentence in the letter, written on what appeared to be the sort of lined paper used by schoolchildren, caused her to drop the paper.
"Mother, I am in the city, I will be coming to see you, and I'm not alone."