“Don’t make it a whole production.

There’s a space heater somewhere.” There was not a space heater somewhere; I knew that garage, its bare studs and its oil stain and the cold that came straight up through the slab into your feet.

But I didn’t say so.

I had already begun to do the thing I did best in that family, which was to go still and quiet and let them believe the stillness was surrender.

“All right,” I said.

And I hung up before she could hear anything in my voice, because there was something in my voice, and it was not what she would have expected, and I was not ready to show it yet.