And the morning I stopped — the morning I accepted at last that Bryce was not a good man having a bad stretch but simply the man he was, complete, finished, exactly as much as he would ever be — an enormous weight went off me, and what rushed in to fill the space where it had been was that startling, oceanic calm.

He heard it in the lawyer’s office and mistook it for coldness.

It was the opposite of coldness.

It was a woman who had stopped, at last, setting herself on fire to keep a cold man warm.

In time, the DNA test confirmed what the ultrasound had already told everyone: the baby was not Bryce’s.

Camila went back to Dario.

Teresa began, tentatively, to send the girls birthday gifts, which I allowed, because a grandmother’s late love is still better for a child than none.