It had been in her arms when the world turned from terror to safety.

And so it was not a backpack anymore, not to her; it was a talisman, a relic of her rescue, the tangible memory of the day she discovered that her father would always come back for her.

Marcus would have bought her a hundred new backpacks.

But he understood, standing in that doorway, that this one could not be replaced, because what it carried could not be bought: it carried the memory of being saved.

Children keep such things, and adults often do not understand why, because adults have forgotten how enormous it is to be small and frightened and then, suddenly, rescued.