Eight years after my husband filed for divorce the week I told him I was pregnant, he texted me an invitation to Christmas dinner at his mother’s house. He expected me to turn up alone. I turned up with four eight-year-olds who have his jaw — and then one of them asked him a question and the room stopped.

Now:

Christmas dinner at Mom’s, Hensley Ridge, the 25th. Family wants to see you one last time.

I read it three times.

Then I laughed, and not because it was funny, but because I knew precisely what that sentence was for.

Trent Mercer still had a twenty-five-year-old woman in his head. Devastated. On her own. Probably grateful to be asked.

My assistant Wynn was in my doorway with a folder.

“Kendra. You’re not going.”

I looked out at the city and said, “Oh, I’m going.”

Christmas morning was clear and hard and blue.

We lifted off at ten past nine with four children strapped into the back in matching red, because they had voted on it and I had lost.

I should say what those four knew before we got on that aircraft, because a great many people have since assumed I used them.