I pulled her in and held her so hard she squeaked. I told her we were not getting a divorce. And here’s the thing, I didn’t actually know that when I said it. I just knew I would burn the whole house down before I let her think she had to carry our marriage on her little back. “Nobody is leaving,” I kept saying into her hair. “Nobody is leaving.”

That night Dan came home and I showed him the bag and watched him fall apart at the kitchen table, this big man with his face in his hands. We talked. Really talked, for the first time in maybe a year, not about who does what but about how we got here and the fact that our kid had been planning to drive to Virginia to fix us. We started seeing somebody two weeks later. A counselor. Dan’s idea, actually, which surprised me.

I won’t sit here and tell you it’s all fixed now, because that would be a lie and you’d smell it. Some nights are still hard. We’re still two tired people, just two tired people trying. But we don’t say things to make the other one flinch anymore. We go outside now. We check the stairs.

The purple backpack is still under her bed. I put it back. She doesn’t know I know it’s there. I unpacked the granola bars so they wouldn’t go stale, but I left Mr. Buttons and the flashlight and our wedding photo right where she had them. I check it sometimes when she’s at school, the way you’d check a fever. Last week I looked. Everything’s still in there.

I don’t know what it means that she hasn’t unpacked it. I tell myself she just forgot about it. But I think she’s keeping it. Just in case. And I haven’t found a way to ask her, because I’m scared of the answer.