What I actually reclaimed, without knowing I had lost it, was the ability to open a door I was afraid of and find, on the other side, not a wound but a welcome.

That, it turns out, is what was really hidden under the mattress all along.

But before I get to the Sundays, and to the flour, and to the enormous relief of being wrong, I have to sit for a moment with the girl on the mattress, the one whispering please not again, because she is the key to the whole thing.

Everything foolish I did that morning grew out of her.