It is the nearness of it.

If my grandfather had been a slightly less careful man — if he had trusted my judgment about Flynn instead of his own, if he had decided a protection clause was an insult to a happy marriage, if he had simply not gotten around to it — then Flynn’s plan would have worked exactly as he built it.

I would have woken with no insurance, no legal standing, and no access to my own children, a woman erased in a hallway while she was too unconscious to object.

The custody review would not have dissolved in an hour; it would have ground on for months while I fought it broke and alone.