For the first time in my adult life, no one was telling me what to do.

And I found, when the machinery finally went silent, that I knew exactly where I needed to go.

Chapter 19 — Park Slope

Hours later I stood outside Gabriela’s building in Park Slope — a modest brownstone with flower boxes in the windows and a child’s tricycle by the stoop.

When she opened the door she was holding Arabella.

“Look, Mommy, it’s the man from the airport,” the little girl chirped.