I cannot explain what happened next, only that Taylor and I did not need to speak. We both simply understood what we had to do, and we knelt beside that woman in the silk blouse and her screams left her mouth and entered our bodies and the three of us held the tender weight of that child’s body and rocked and wailed together, a strange, beautiful sound, and for a moment, her Ava was still alive, was still here with us.
