Before I carried Hazel out, I checked my phone one last time, not because I expected anything, but because some stubborn married part of me still went through the motion.

There was nothing.

No missed call.

No text.

Not a single word from Liam in the more than eight hours since he had walked out those doors, no query about whether the daughter he had abandoned in an emergency room had lived or died.

Even then, even knowing everything I knew, that emptiness on the screen had the power to take my breath, because there is a floor below which you simply cannot imagine a person sinking until they sink below it.

I had made my peace, more or less, with the walking out; a coward flees.