I could not be both.

The reacting woman and the acting woman wanted opposite things in that moment; the satisfaction of the first would have cost me the victory of the second.

And I have learned, in ten years of walking into rooms where someone is dying, that this is the choice that separates the people who save the ones they love from the people who merely grieve them: the discipline, in the worst moment, to set down your own overwhelming feelings, not because they do not matter, but because your child needs your competence more than she needs your fury.

My fury was real.

It was enormous.

I felt every ounce of it.

I just did not let it drive, that morning, because I had something more important to protect than my own need to fall apart, and her name was Fiona, and she was in the back seat, cold, watching my face to learn whether she was safe.

So I made my face safe.

The falling apart could wait.

My daughter could not.

Chapter 2 — Did I Lose the Prize?

Blake’s voice came barking through the car’s speaker before I had gone two miles.

“Maren?

Are you insane?