No family nearby to speak of.

And a wife who had made it unmistakably clear that she was not coming back and did not wish to be reached.

I remember feeling the sheer mathematical impossibility of it settle over me, the certainty that a single person could not actually do what I was now going to have to do.

And I remember, somewhere in that long dark night, arriving at the only conclusion available to me, which was that it did not matter whether it was possible.

It was going to happen regardless, because there were six girls asleep upstairs who had exactly one parent left, and that parent was me.