Lily did not love him less that night.

She loved him, if anything, more, and more freely, because at last he was letting her.

I have watched a great many parents, since, try to protect their children from a hard truth by hiding it, and I understand the impulse, because it comes from love, and I felt it myself.

But I learned that summer, watching Lily climb into her father’s lap, that children are almost always stronger than we give them credit for, and that what frightens them most is not the hard truth itself but the sense that the grown-ups around them are hiding something, that there is a shape in the room no one will name.

When we finally told Lily the truth, in words made for an eight-year-old, we did not break her.