Victor, what is this?

Get me out of here.”

“The commercial life insurance policy,” he said, in a conversational tone I had never once heard him use in eight years of marriage, “pays triple for an accidental workplace fatality.”

I heard the words, and for a moment my mind simply refused them, the way a hand jerks back from a stove.

“Victor.

Your children are in here.

Your children are inside me.”