What I had really been doing, all along, was walking out of a trap — and I got my children out of it with me, every one of them, safe, before it could close.

And the strangest thing of all, the thing I did not expect, was that I did not feel heartbroken.

I kept waiting for the heartbreak to arrive, in the car, at the pancake place, that night, in the quiet after the kids were asleep.

It never really came.

What came instead was something I had not felt in longer than I could remember, something clean and wide and almost dizzying.

I felt free.