By noon my sister-in-law Dana had called from Ohio.

By two, three cousins.

By four, an aunt of Luca’s I had met perhaps six times, who told me on the phone that a ten-year marriage should not end over “a moment of foolishness,” and who suggested that I consider what this would do to the children at Christmas.

By six, four separate people had used the phrase for the sake of the kids, and one had suggested that these things happen in every marriage and that the difference between the ones that survive and the ones that don’t is discretion.

At seven-thirty my own mother called and asked one question — “What do you want?” — and when I said “I don’t know yet,” she said “Okay,” and talked about something else for twenty minutes.