That, I understood, standing in my kitchen warming milk, was what recovery actually looked like.

Not some grand dramatic moment of triumph, not a scene, just this: a child at a window on a stormy afternoon, feeling not fear but the small warm wish for a sweet drink and his parents’ company.

The storm had not gone away.

Storms never do; the cold comes back to the city every winter, and it always will.

What had changed was not the weather but my son, and what it meant to him.

He had learned, in the months of patient proof, that a storm outside the window was no longer a threat, because he was on the inside now, with people who would never put him out, and the rain on the glass was just rain, and the answer to it was hot chocolate with a ton of marshmallows.