When Blanca and I came back inside, Dario was waiting in the hallway, and the warmth had gone out of his face entirely.

I understood, in that hallway, that the window had closed.

He knew that I knew.

There was no more pretending to be a wife with a headache; there was only the distance between me and the back door, and my son somewhere behind me with his backpack on.

Everything I did next I did slowly, so that nothing would look like flight until it was flight.

I have never been so afraid, and I have never been so certain of exactly what to do, and I have since learned that those two things can live in a body at the same time.