The specialist assessment would give us information the earlier care had not made clear to me.

I had trusted that each appointment would tell us what we needed to know when we needed to know it.

The brochure seemed to offer a pause in a life where everything required another calculation.

“How could we be away that long?” I asked.

“I’ve cleared the time.”

“What about the house?”

“We’ll manage.”

“What about the appointments?”