A nine-year-old, alone, had reasoned her way to strapping the baby to her body so that her own exhaustion could not hurt him.

And she had held on, that way, hour after hour, until at last — after nearly four hours, when she could not physically hold on any longer — she had broken her mother’s rule, and picked up the house phone, and called me.

She had endured for four hours before she felt allowed to ask for help.

That is the thing I carry.

I turn that number over in my mind more than any other part of the story.