His expression softened, and he did not look away from my stomach.

“That’s exactly why I have to,” he said.

And then: “If I can’t watch her grow up, maybe I can at least make sure somebody else gets more time with theirs.” I did not want to hear it.

I did not want to think about a world in which my daughter grew up without her father, let alone a world in which I had to make arrangements for it, sign papers about it, plan it.

But I understand now what I could not quite see on that porch: that Mark was not giving up, and he was not being morbid.

He had simply, faster than I had, begun to think past his own death — not about the fact of dying, which he could not change, but about what he might still leave behind, which he could.