And there, sitting on a wooden bench beneath a dogwood tree that was heavy with white spring blossom, was Marcus.

I stopped where I was and simply looked at him, at my husband, whom I was seeing clearly for the first time in months.

He had a simple jacket on over the worn blue scrubs he still wore, though he had no right to them anymore and no reason to except that they were comfortable and they were his.

There was a children’s storybook open in his lap.

And sitting close beside him on the bench, tucked under his arm, was a small boy in a soft knit beanie, the soft kind of beanie a child wears when the long treatments have taken his hair, and the boy was giggling, helpless with delight, because Marcus was doing the voices.