His father, Raymond, was a powerful and well-connected real estate consultant.

His mother, Diane, was a soft-spoken retired teacher who always seemed the gentlest person in any room.

And in Christopher’s family there was one unshakeable ritual: on the first Sunday of every month, we drove up to his parents’ beautiful home in Pacific Heights for a long, elaborate family dinner.

In three years we had never once missed it.

The nightmare began, though I did not know to call it that yet, four months before the night everything came apart — the night I stopped ignoring the quiet voice — the night it saved my life.

Chapter 2 — The First Time

It started at an ordinary dinner.

Diane had cooked; Raymond insisted on filling my plate himself, telling me warmly that I looked too thin these days.

A short while after I ate, something happened to me that I had never felt before.

It was not tiredness.

My eyelids grew impossibly heavy, my legs simply stopped answering me, and the conversation around the table seemed to recede down a long tunnel.

I had to grip the edge of the table to stay in my chair.

“I think I need to lie down,” I managed to whisper, and Christopher put his arm around me and walked me to the guest bedroom, and after he laid me down, my memory of the rest of that evening simply stops.

It goes black.