I ran it forward: the diapers, the formula, the childcare I could not afford while I worked the job that was supposed to pay for the childcare, the impossibility stacked on impossibility.

And every time I reached the bottom of the arithmetic and it came out impossible, I thought about that hand around my finger, and I understood that I had already decided, that I had decided the second she grabbed on, and that the math was just something I was making myself do so I could say later that I’d been thorough.

Some decisions are not made in the head.

They are made in the body, in an instant, and the head spends the next several hours or years catching up and pretending it was in charge.

My head said it was impossible.

The rest of me had already said yes.