Caleb was ten.

And in the weeks and months that followed, I watched my little boy do something that broke my heart even as it filled me with a fierce and terrible pride: I watched him grow up almost overnight.

The child who had been careless and loud and gloriously unconcerned with anything beyond his own small world became, in the span of a single grief-stricken season, watchful, and quiet, and aware.

He saw me worrying about the bills.