Lily was a cheerful, uncomplicated child, quick to laugh and slow to worry, and the expression she wore now — careful, uncertain, the look of someone carrying a thing too heavy for them — did not belong on a five-year-old at the beach.

I had seen that look before, but never on her — I had seen it across conference tables, on the faces of junior employees who had discovered something about their bosses they did not know what to do with.

It is the look of a person holding a weight they are too small to hold, and seeing it on my daughter’s sunlit face stopped me where I stood.

She leaned closer to me, the way children do when they mean to tell you something important, and she lowered her voice to the loud whisper that small children believe is quiet.