It was not weakness that made me smile.

It was the coldest, clearest strength I have ever had to summon, and I summoned it with my five-year-old watching, because he was exactly what I was protecting.

Chapter 3 — How Was Your Day

Julian came home at a quarter past six, calling out the way he always did — “Honey?

I’m home!” — the sound of a happy man in a happy house.

I had spent the intervening hours doing something I am not proud of and would do again in a heartbeat: I had gone up to our bedroom, unlocked the drawer, and opened the velvet box, and found it empty, exactly as I already knew it would be.