Two children, the same hallway, the same information, and I have had to learn that I do not get to decide which of those is the healthy one.

She asked me, that first night, standing in her doorway at nine-thirty when she was supposed to be asleep: “Is he in jail?”

“He was. He isn’t now.”

“Where is he?”

I stood there with my hand on the door frame and made a decision that Diane Kessler would have physically prevented if she’d been in the room.

“He works at a hotel,” I said. “He sweeps the sidewalk. I don’t know where he lives.”