Chapter 5

They took my daughter to the NICU at 2:10 a.m. for hypothermia and observation. They took my body at 3:40. Between those two hours, my husband did not move from the wet patch of carpet where I had died. Vanessa fainted in the hallway and no one caught her. She went down hard, clipped her temple on the newel post, and it was Ruth — seventy-four, with a newborn in one arm — who got a housekeeper to lift her onto a sofa. The party guests left in a silent stream of coats and headlights. Eighty...