There was no money for a motel.

The buses had stopped running.

So we walked — for hours, through streets going white and empty, and when Mason’s small legs gave out I carried him, and when my arms gave out I set him down and we walked again.

I am not going to describe that walk in detail, because there is a four-year-old in it, and because the memory is one I keep behind a locked door of my own.

It is enough to say that we were both in real danger, the kind that does not announce itself with drama but simply, quietly, closes in, and that the thing that frightened me most, near the end of it, was not Mason crying.

It was Mason going quiet.