My phone rang while we were still on the jet bridge at LAX.

It was early afternoon on the coast, that clean gold light California hands you like it’s nothing, like light like that is just the going rate.

The girls were ahead of me — Willa herding her sisters and the carry-ons, Poppy and Wren giddy and rumpled from the flight, all three of them walking toward a life I could feel opening up in front of us like a door onto a bright room.

I looked at the screen.