And above all of it, every afternoon, she heard the voice of her eight-year-old son, who came in with a blue backpack and sat down in the chair beside her bed and talked to a mother the whole world had written off.

Chapter 2 — They Were Wrong About That

She had been a person who won arguments for a living, and now she could not win the smallest one — could not tell a nurse she was cold, could not tell her son she was there.

The crash came back to her in pieces she could not assemble in order.

A curve near the highway exit.

The pedal going soft under her foot, then softer, then gone.