In for four, hold for four, out for four.

I sat on the edge of my bed and did it while my daughter waited downstairs with a phone slowly coming back to life, and I tried to prepare myself for photographs, for the faces of my sons, for whatever small devastating ordinary thing the device might hold.

I was braced for grief.

I was not braced for the truth, because it had not once occurred to me in six years that there was a truth left to find.

I was still sitting there when I heard her footsteps, fast and loud, coming up the stairs and down the hall toward my door, and I knew before she reached it that the phone had given up something, because you learn the sound of your child’s urgent feet and this was that sound.