He saw now that he had also been teaching her: that love is a thing that gets taken, that the safe move is to not reach for it, that the way you survive loss is by refusing to risk it again.

And here was his ten-year-old, at a curb, saying it back to him in her own words — I don’t want to get attached to her — the exact philosophy of his own guarded heart, coming out of his daughter’s mouth, and breaking his heart to hear.

Adanna had seen it coming.

Even dying, she had seen it: that the real danger was not the grief but what the grief might make of them, two frightened people in a locked house, keeping everyone out to keep from ever hurting again.

And so he did not tell Winnie not to be afraid.

He told her the truth Adanna had left him with — that the closing of a heart does not spare you the pain, it only starts the loss early, robs you of the years you could have had — and he held his daughter at the curb and hoped it was not too late for either of them to learn it.