And do not, under any circumstances, call Dad, unless it is a real emergency.

And Lily, being nine, and trusting her mother, had waited.

She had waited past seventeen minutes.

She had waited past an hour.

When Leo got hungry and began to wail, she had warmed a bottle and fed him, the way she had seen us do it.

When he would not settle, she had walked him around the kitchen island, back and forth, until her thin arms burned, and then, terrified that her tired arms might give out and she might drop him, she had figured out how to strap him into the heavy adult carrier and wear him against her own small chest, so that even if she collapsed, he could not fall.

She had done that.