But Lucas needed to hear that his father still loved him, in a steady voice, from a mother whose hands were not shaking where he could see them — and so my hands did not shake where he could see them.

That is a kind of preparation too, I have come to understand.

Not the packed suitcases or the filed petition, but the harder, invisible readiness to be, for your children, the solid thing in the room on the worst night of their small lives, no matter what is happening inside you.

I had prepared for months for that night.

But that was the part I could not pack for.

That part I had to be.