“You came back for us.”

And that, of everything, undid me completely, because there was no accusation in it, no bitterness, no reproach for all the times I had not come back, for all the times I had chosen the laptop and the merger and the trip over them.

There was only a child’s simple, forgiving joy that this time, at last, her father had come.

I held them both as tightly as I dared, tears streaming down my face, and I made them a promise, and I have kept it every day since.