And then, partway through dinner, my sister Gwen slammed her phone down onto the table.

“I can’t post a single vacation picture,” she announced, to the whole table.

And she picked the phone back up, and enlarged a photo, and turned it around so everyone could see: a shot of Maya, smiling in the Florida sun, radiant and unhidden.

I felt something cold move through me, a mother’s early-warning system, before Gwen had said another word.

Because I saw where this was going, the way you see a glass begin to tip before it falls, and I opened my mouth to head it off.