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”

“Don’t speak loudly.

Listen to me.” I put one finger to my lips and pushed myself up onto my elbows, and my arms shook so badly beneath me that I nearly went back down.

“Don’t move yet.

Not fast.”

Here is the thing I am proudest of, in the whole terrible night, and it is not something I did — it is something we did not do.

We did not cry.