My Husband Cooked Dinner, and Minutes After My Son and I Ate, We Both Collapsed. I Played Dead on the Floor and Heard Him on the Phone: “Soon They’ll Both Be Gone”

So I spent it on the one thing it was good for: staying alive long enough to matter.

I let him touch my son’s shoulder.

I let him say those words.

And I filed the sound of them away in the locked room with everything else, to take out and grieve over on some far-off day when we were both safe.

That day did come.

It took a long time.

“You checked their breathing?” the phone asked.

“They’re completely out,” he said, moving back toward the table.