We told her that our family was not going to be afraid of it, and that we were not going to pretend it was not happening, and that whatever the road ahead looked like, we were going to walk every single step of it together, all three of us, holding on to each other.

She was quiet for a long while, taking it in with those serious dark eyes so like her father’s, the eyes that missed nothing.

And then she climbed into Marcus’s lap, carefully, the way she must have sensed she should, and she reached up and put her small arms around his neck, and she said, simply and without any fear at all, “Then I’ll help take care of you too, Daddy.” And I watched my husband hold our daughter and finally understand, I think, the thing he had gotten so wrong for six months: that being loved and cared for through a hard thing is not a burden you inflict on your family.

It is a gift you allow them to give.