Marcus would think, for the rest of his life, about how close it had come to going the other way, and the thought would never stop frightening him.

Because he had very nearly not listened.

He wants that understood, whenever he tells this story, because he does not want to be mistaken for a hero.

He was not a hero.

He was a distracted, busy, ordinary father with a plane to catch and a presentation on his mind, and when his daughter first ran to him and asked him not to leave, his instinct, his trained, automatic, adult instinct, had been to smile and reassure and gently detach her arms and go.

That instinct is not villainous.