“Mommy said if she fell asleep for a long time,” he told me, “I had to give this to you.” My knees very nearly went out from under me right there in the hallway.

Because a three-year-old does not invent a sentence like that.

Someone had knelt down, as I was kneeling now, and pressed that drive into his little hand, and made him repeat those words until he had them — someone who was afraid she might not be able to deliver the message herself.

Chapter 4 — Five Minutes

Before I could ask him anything more, Vivienne turned and saw us, and for just a fraction of a second her smile flickered — there and gone — before she glided toward us wearing the warm, practiced sweetness she always put on in public.

“Thomas, darling, the entrance music is starting.