And every single thing he missed, I got to keep.

And I did not correct her.

That was the other thing that happened in that cereal aisle — that when she called me Dad, I had a half-second where the honest, careful part of me thought I should gently remind her that I was her uncle, that her father was someone else, that I did not want to take something that wasn’t mine to take.

And then I looked at her small hopeful face pointing at the cereal, and I understood that I would be correcting her out of a scruple that served no one but my own discomfort.

She did not have another father in any way that mattered to a child in a grocery cart.

She had me. Dad was not a title I was stealing; it was a fact she had noticed before I had the courage to.