I want to be clear about that; I was not brave, I was not composed, I was a woman whose entire life had just detonated over a public-address system, frozen in my seat with the blood roaring in my ears, incapable of movement or thought.

Left to myself, I might have sat frozen in that seat until we landed.

But I was not left to myself.

Beside me was a seven-year-old with a broken face asking who Chloe was, and the instant his hurt registered — the instant my own catastrophe collided with my child’s — something took over that was stronger than my devastation, that did not care about my devastation, that simply set my devastation aside like a coat and stood me up and started me walking.

I did not summon it.