It was a mistake, she just — she got the medicine wrong — ”

Chapter 13 — Never Again

I took two steps back, pulling Toby tight against my chest, moving Poppy behind my shoulder with my other arm, putting my body between my children and their father.

There is a kind of clarity that arrives, once, in a person’s life, and reorganizes everything after it.

I had spent years unable to answer the simplest question about my own marriage — was it bad, was I imagining it, was I the problem — and in that instant, with a baby against my chest and a daughter behind my arm and a man reaching for us across a treatment room, the question answered itself and never troubled me again.

My body knew before my mind had finished the sentence.