This is how big it is. And underneath my terror, a small hard thing began to form that would carry me through everything after — not courage exactly, but its cold cousin, resolve.

My son had measured the danger and handed me the measurement.

The least I could do was be equal to it.

Chapter 8 — The Warnings I Missed

Back in the damp apartment, I started going back through the last several months, and every ordinary memory turned, on a second look, into a warning I had failed to read.

Linus had spent hours locked in his room lately, bent over his laptop.