What changed was Caleb.

His condition, which the doctors had warned could turn at any time, took a frightening step downward, and suddenly the abstract arithmetic of the future collapsed into the sharp arithmetic of now.

There was no more time to be squeamish about how a miracle arrived, only the question of whether it would arrive at all.

So I said yes.

I want to be honest about the yes, because it was not a small or a simple thing.

I was a woman agreeing to marry a stranger four times my age, to bind my life legally to a man whose family already looked at me with open hatred, for reasons I did not yet fully understand.