He had planned, in advance, the story that would be told about my mind afterward — the anxious, unstable pediatrician, worn down by her work, imagining threats, finally undone.

He had lined up a doctor to sign it.

Every time Kai had come to me uneasy and I had reassured him, I had been unknowingly rehearsing the role Dario wrote for me: the mother who explains away real danger as nerves.

If it had worked, my own son’s warnings would have been folded into the evidence of my instability.

The thing that saved us was not only Kai’s courage.