That was the engine under all that impossible seven-year-old competence.

It was not courage in the abstract.

It was love with a plan.

“Is Daddy going away?” she asked.

Cordell followed her gaze to the cruiser, and then looked back at her, and he did not soften it into a maybe, because she had earned the truth and a maybe would have been its own small betrayal.

“Yes,” he said.