She was eight years old, bright and watchful the way she had always been, and she knew already that something had shifted, because children always know.

We did not tell her everything a doctor could have told her, because she was eight and did not need the charts and the timelines.

But we told her the truth, in words she could hold.

We told her that Daddy had an illness, one the doctors could not make go away, and that it meant his body was going to get tired a little faster than other daddies’ bodies, and that some things he used to do easily were going to get harder for him over time.

And we told her the most important part, the part we had decided together on the drive home.