That part had felt the temperature of that family and known, without letting the rest of me know, that a day might come when I would need to reach a person who was entirely mine, from somewhere I could not predict, in a hurry, in the dark.

So it had memorized Phoebe’s number, and it had kept the inheritance separate, and it had installed the camera, and it had said nothing to the rest of me about why, because the rest of me was not ready to hear it.

We are not always one person inside.

Often we are a frightened, hopeful self who wants to believe the marriage is good, walking around on top of a wiser, sadder self who has already done the math and quietly begun to prepare.

For seven years my hopeful self ran my life and my wise self built the exits.

On the night in the foyer, my wise self spoke at last, in six words on a hospital phone, and my hopeful self — the one who had wanted so badly to believe — went silent, and did not argue, because she had seen the smile on Flynn’s face and she knew, now, everything the other self had always known.