My daughter was alive.

And even in the middle of that overwhelming, drowning relief, I did not let myself forget, and I will not let this story forget: that a child was not alive.

That while I held my living daughter, another mother’s son lay under a sheet in a cold basement room.

My relief and that grief lived in me in the very same instant, and I would not let the one erase the other, because a mother who is only glad it was not her child, and spares no grief for the child it was, has kept only half of her humanity.

I held Brucie, and I was grateful past words.

And I grieved for Bruno, whom I had never met, with everything I had left over, which was a great deal.