I remember the strange suspended quality of that moment, the four of us clustered at the top of the stairs, Theodore hovering behind with his mild curious expression, Zachary’s hand warm on my arm, Jacqueline moving forward with her banana bread and her pleasant obliviousness, and me, vibrating with dread, certain that the next sixty seconds were going to detonate my entire family.

I was right that the next sixty seconds would change everything.

I was extravagantly, spectacularly wrong about how.

I have noticed that this is the signature shape of the most memorable moments in a life: the ones where you correctly sense that something enormous is about to happen and completely misjudge what it is.

I stood at the top of those stairs braced for catastrophe, for the detonation of my family, for a confrontation that would leave permanent scars, and I was not wrong that a threshold was about to be crossed.

Something did change forever in the next few minutes.