Calculation

Tessa folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. For years she had practiced patience and performance, learned how to laugh at the right beat, to feign triumph when the cameras flashed. But she had never rehearsed losing one’s past to a public outcry. She had not thought about the smell of news anchors’ breath or the small, hungry way strangers would step into her grief and shear it open for sport.

“The children,” Ayisha said, soft, the word full of weight. “If ...