“Where are the girls?” And I stepped out from my home office at the end of the hall.

I was not wearing the faded yoga pants I had lived in, more or less continuously, for six months.

I wore a tailored cream trouser suit.

My hair was styled.

My face was composed into an expression of absolute, unbothered calm, the expression I had worn in a thousand high-stakes meetings before I ever became a mother, and had forgotten I still owned.

“In the nursery,” I said quietly, leaning against the doorframe with a cup of hot chamomile tea cradled in my hands.