I moved slowly.

I let my voice go thin.

I deferred.

I stood in the kitchen of a house I now knew far more about than its owners did, and I played a tired new mother with no cards in her hand, and I waited.

It was the hardest acting I have ever done, and not for the reasons you’d think.

The exhaustion was easy; I didn’t have to fake that.

What was hard was holding a newborn I would have died for while smiling at the people who’d decided he was inventory, and keeping my hands steady, and letting Marguerite correct the way I swaddled him as though I were a slow student and she a patient teacher.