It was lying in that hallway, night after night, visibly and reliably awake, taking the watch off his small shoulders and putting it onto mine.

I wanted him to see me there every time he stirred, until his body finally understood that the post was filled, that he had been relieved of duty, that he was allowed — for the first time in his conscious memory — to be a child who simply sleeps because a grown-up is keeping the dark away.

It took weeks.

But there came a night, and I remember it exactly, when I checked on them and found Mason asleep on his back with his arms flung wide and his mouth open, dead to the world, utterly undefended — sleeping the way a child is supposed to sleep, the way he could only sleep once he finally, fully believed that the watching was no longer his job.

I stood in that doorway and cried, quietly, so as not to wake him.