I said: “I am.

I’m going to be with you.

You are never going to be alone in this world as long as I’m alive, and that is a promise, and I will keep it every single day.”

She was four.

She had no capacity to hold me to it.

I held myself to it for five years, most days, imperfectly, in the specific way a man in command of a battalion holds himself to anything.