We sat on a bench at the end of the pier with the dark water moving under us and the town lights coming on behind, and for a few minutes nobody said anything about the room we’d left.

Sofia leaned into my side.

Cruz watched the boats.

I let the quiet sit, because they needed it more than they needed my words, and because I needed to feel, just then, the simple weight of my two kids beside me, safe, eating ice cream, on the far side of the worst night of our lives together.

Whatever it had cost me back in that room, it had bought this — a bench, two cones, and the fact that neither of my children would ever again wonder whether their father would let someone put them behind a pillar.

That was a fair price.