A certain quality of afternoon light, a suitcase zipper, the particular pitch of a baby’s cry, and I am back in that hallway, twenty years younger, holding Daisy, watching the whole structure of my life come apart in the space of an hour.

I have made my peace with most of what Laura did to me.

I have not entirely made my peace with what she did in front of the children, with the fact that they saw it, that Samantha stood barefoot on those stairs and watched her mother choose a car and a trip to the Bahamas over the six of them.

A person can recover from being left.