Across the kitchen, Poppy giggled and wiped a drip of maple syrup off Toby’s chin, and he clapped his small hands and babbled at her, and she laughed at whatever she decided he had said.

I went to my children and wrapped my arms around them both, and I kissed their foreheads, one and then the other, and I held on — stepping forward, at last, into a bright and quiet and entirely safe life that belonged to no one on this earth but the three of us.

I keep the teddy bear on a shelf in Poppy’s room now, the same one, with the little denim overalls, and sometimes I catch her telling her brother the story of it in her own words, the way children retell the things that mattered to them — Grandma did a bad thing, and I saw, and I kept the bottle safe, and I told the doctor, and that’s how we got our new house.

She tells it plainly, without fear, the way she does everything, and Toby listens to the sound of her voice without understanding a word, and beams.