I looked at her hands, holding her book.

They were steady.

Completely steady.

No tremble, no strain, no exhaustion — just the relaxed, easy hands of a nine-year-old girl absorbed in a story on a summer afternoon.

I had watched those same hands shake so violently they could not hold a bottle of water.

And now they were steady, and her shoulders were loose, and there was a lightness to her whole small body that had been absent for months, the lightness of a child who is no longer carrying anything she should not have to carry.

I carried a tray out onto the patio — cut fruit, and juice boxes, the ordinary small offerings of an ordinary father on an ordinary afternoon, which is a thing I will never again take for granted.