My hands were steadier than they had any right to be.

I noticed that, distantly, the way you notice something about a person you’re only half acquainted with.

Some part of me that Devon had never managed to reach — some small, stubborn architect of a self I’d stopped believing existed — had woken up on that bathroom floor and started, very calmly, to work.

It sorted the facts.

It measured the risks.

It understood, before the rest of me had caught up, that panic was a luxury I could not afford and that the woman who fell apart on this floor would be the woman who got into that car.