I felt the specific, shaky quiet of someone who has watched a car miss a child by a foot — not joy, just the enormous ordinary relief of a disaster that did not, in the end, happen.

Zoe was still holding the tuition notice.

“Can we pay this now?” “Yes,” I said.

“We can pay it now.” “All of it?” “All of it.”

The next morning, at the school office, I paid the four hundred and twenty dollars with my debit card and asked the administrator to stamp the receipt, because I wanted the paper in my hand.

Zoe asked to keep the little silver sticker the machine spat out, and stuck it to the back of her tablet case, and for the first time in weeks the most important paper I carried had nothing to do with Chad.