Not one person in that room, including her mother, moved.

And I found that I could not stand it — that after everything, after all of it, I could not sit at a table and watch that girl cry alone with six adults not moving.

So I got up and went into my kitchen and stood at the sink with the water running until it stopped.

When I came back, Arthur was saying, “—eight months is not a mistake.

Eight months is a way of living.