In his place stood a bright, strong ten-year-old who knew exactly who he was and where he belonged and who held his own sky steady.

The drawing had grown up.

So had the boy.

I stood there holding the two drawings in my mind at once — the crooked crayon one folded in a drawer at home, and the crisp confident one in my hands — and I understood that they were, in a way, the whole story, told in two pictures three years apart.

The first drawing was a picture of a father: BEST PILOT EVER, a small boy’s whole heart aimed outward, at a hero he believed in, a love that depended entirely on another person being worthy of it.

And that love had been betrayed, because the person it depended on was not worthy, and a love that lives entirely outside yourself, in another person’s hands, can always be dropped.