She was checking.

After everything, after the rescue and the hospital and the weeks of recovery, after she had every reason to know he was alive, my daughter still needed to verify it, with her own senses, in her own way, one more time, before she could fully believe it and let herself have him back.

And I understood, watching her, that this was the residue of the trauma, the mark that night had left on her: that she had learned, at eight years old, that adults could be wrong, that certificates could lie, that a man could be called dead and not be, and so she could no longer simply take it on faith that her father was alive.

She had to check.