What came instead was Brandon, on our fourth or fifth time out, cutting the evening short because he’d found a used copy of a picture book Holly loved and wanted to drop it by before her bedtime — not to impress me, I wasn’t even going to be there for the handoff, but because he’d been thinking about her.

What came was a man who learned her allergies before he learned my middle name, who asked me, seriously, months in, whether he was allowed to love her or whether that was a line I needed him to hold, because he didn’t want to overstep but the truth was he already did.

I had spent Holly’s whole life afraid that the fact of her would cost me love.

Brandon made the fact of her the center of it.