It meant Isla would never spend a childhood being handed back and forth to a man who had decided, in her first hour, that she was a liability.

It meant no custody weekends with a father performing a fatherhood he did not feel.

It meant she was mine, wholly and legally and forever, and that the one true thing Beau Draycott ever did for his daughter was to get out of her life and stay out of it.

Some fathers give their children a name.

Beau gave Isla the far greater gift, without meaning to, of his complete and permanent absence, and I will be grateful for it every day of her life.

Chapter 13 — Awake