There is a particular way that children of single parents grow up, I have come to think, that makes them older than their years in some ways and younger in none of the ways that matter.

Grace saw too much.

She saw me count out grocery money at the register and put things back.

She saw me come home gray with exhaustion and still sit down to help her with her reading.

She saw the pause before certain answers, the door that closed behind my eyes when she asked about her father or her grandparents, and she was too kind and too perceptive to keep pushing when she saw it hurt me.

But she never stopped noticing, and she never stopped wanting to understand, and I loved that about her even when it frightened me, because I knew that one day her wanting to understand would meet my not being able to explain, and something would have to give.