She did not cry.

She sat with it, this enormous new fact about herself, and held it with a composure that undid me.

My daughter, I thought, had inherited more from Julian than his dark hair and his stubborn chin.

She had inherited his steadiness, his way of meeting a hard truth head-on instead of flinching from it.

He would have been so proud of her, prouder than he knew how to say.

He never got to be, and I would carry that grief for both of us, quietly, for the rest of my life.