I remember two coworkers looking up at once.
I remember my hand missing the elevator button because it was shaking.
I remember saying, maybe to my manager, maybe to nobody, “My daughter needs me.”
Panic is messy.
Motherhood is not.
It gives you one job and strips the rest of the world down to noise.
The drive should have taken twenty-two minutes.
I made it in fourteen.
I don’t recommend it.
I don’t remember half of it.
I remember the red light at Maple and Third turning green before I was ready.
I remember gripping the wheel so hard my palms hurt.
I remember calling Chloe back three times and getting nothing but silence until the call dropped.
I called Daniel twice.
No answer.
The closer I got to our street, the more ordinary everything looked, and that made it worse.
A man was rolling a trash can back up his driveway.
