Now it was my own child behind the doors, and all my professional calm deserted me, and I was simply a mother, hollowed out with fear, gripping a cup of cold coffee and watching a door.

Arthur did not try to fill the silence with false hope.

He simply stayed.

And I have come to believe that this is the greatest gift one person can give another in the worst hours, not words, which are almost always useless, but the plain fact of not being left alone.

Chapter 15 — The Farce

At eleven o’clock, while my son was still in surgery, the doors of the private suite swung open and Julian and Victoria marched in, flanked by two expensive-looking estate attorneys in dark suits.

“This marriage is a farce,” Victoria said, looking at me as though I were something she had scraped from the sole of her designer shoe.