I felt as though I had failed him just because I couldn’t explain where you were.”

My throat tightened.

“You didn’t fail him.”

“I know that now.

But it took time.”

She described the first Christmas with Mason.

A neighbor had carried groceries inside during a snowstorm, and her sister had spent the night on the couch because Mason had a fever.

She had taken photographs so that someday he could see how loved he was, even if the photographs showed only two of them at the kitchen table.