He managed his own rescue the way he’d managed everything else, with a brave little smile and a don’t worry about me — and that told me the arms had not been there for a long time, long before this trip, long before I noticed.

The six days were the emergency.

The five words were the diagnosis.

Chapter 8 — Six Days

On the flight home I read back through two weeks of texts from my husband, and I want to lay a few of them next to what I later learned was actually happening, because the arithmetic of it is the whole story.

Tuesday, from Declan: All quiet.

Jonah ate and went to bed early. Wednesday: Doing great, don’t give us a thought. Thursday — the day, I would work out later, that the last real food in the house ran out — Your boy’s happy as a clam.