Lily nodded, relieved, and began to describe it with the plain, unvarnished honesty that only a very young child can manage.

And with every sentence she spoke, something in me grew quieter and more still, the way the air goes still before weather.

I have thought since that the stillness was my mind doing what it had been trained for two decades to do — clearing the floor, putting away everything that wasn’t the problem, making room to think.

Panic is loud and useless.

What I felt instead was the opposite of panic, a cold widening quiet, and I have learned to be grateful for it, because it is the thing that let me act.