I looked at the top of the screen.

No service.

Three percent of the battery left.

“Please,” I whispered to it, to God, to anything.

“Please work.” I raised the phone flat against the wooden lid an inch above my face, pushing it up toward the earth and the sky I had to believe were still up there somewhere.

And one small bar of signal flickered, and held.

I have thought many times about that single bar of signal, and about all the small, ordinary, overlooked things that had to line up in a precise row for my children to live.