Lily looked up from her book and gave me a warm, quiet, unburdened smile.

“Thanks, Dad,” she said, and went back to her story, entirely at ease, entirely a child.

It is difficult to explain how much that small, easy thanks, Dad meant to me.

It was the sound of my daughter being nine years old again.

Chapter 20 — Never Carry It Alone

I set the tray down, and I knelt on the grass beside the bench where my daughter was reading, and I put my arm around her shoulders, and I kissed the top of her head, the way I have done ten thousand times and intend to do ten thousand more.

“Lily,” I said, quietly, into her hair.