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”

I looked across the table and saw a strange confusion cross my son’s face.

And then the ordinary evening simply ended, mid-sentence, and the other one began.\n\nChapter 3 — The Pulse Check

His footsteps came back toward the kitchen, heavy and unhurried, and I let my eyes fall shut and made every muscle in my body go loose and heavy, though my mouth had gone so dry it ached.

He stopped right beside me.

I felt him kneel.