The cold, and the pain, and the annihilating betrayal of learning my husband had done this on purpose — for my own sake, those things had already beaten me, and some quiet part of me was ready to stop.

But I was not permitted to stop, because I was not the only one on that ledge.

Every time I felt myself begin to let go, the thought of my son doing the falling with me — of his tiny, blameless heart stopping because mine had given up — reached into me and hauled me back from the edge of unconsciousness by main force.

It was not courage, exactly.

Courage implies a choice, and this did not feel like a choice.

It felt like a law of nature, as involuntary as the arms that had wrapped around my belly before I was even conscious of falling.