It broke my heart a little, that necessity, that my daughter would carry forward some measure of that wariness.

But there was something else in it too, something I have come to find beautiful rather than only sad.

Because the same wariness that made her check was the wariness that had saved him.

The refusal to take a death on faith, which is a wound, is also the exact quality that brought her father home.

And so when she put her hands on his cheeks and listened, and then smiled and said now you can, she was performing, one last time, the very act of loving attention that had rescued him, and confirming, with her own senses, that this time the story was true.

Only when she was certain, truly certain, did she let go of her vigilance and become, for a moment, just a little girl hugging her dad.