I could not give Caleb his father back.

But I could tell him, and I would, again and again for the rest of his life, that his father would have been proud beyond words, and that the courage he had shown was Mark’s courage, alive in him, and that in that sense he had never really been without his dad at all.

That evening we walked home together under a darkening sky, Caleb rolling slowly along beside me on his new bike, chattering about gears and trails and a science project due Thursday, a boy again, just a boy.

And I knew that the road ahead would still be long, and that life would bring us more than its share of hard things.