That, I was beginning to understand, was going to be much of my job in the weeks ahead: not the dramatic parts, but the small ones, the standing between my mother and a hundred little reminders of her fear until the fear itself began, slowly, to loosen its grip.

Safety, I was learning, is not a single door you walk through.

It is a thousand small quietings, one after another, until a person can hear a phone buzz and not flinch.

Chapter 16 — The Voicemail

In the early afternoon, the messages stopped, and a voicemail came in instead, and when I played it the last of the polished businessman was gone from Gavin’s voice entirely.

What was left was low and ugly and certain.