“Yes, because it’s full of heavy air,” Posy declared.

“Air is the very heaviest thing there is to carry,” Marlowe agreed, and the child laughed, a bright, bell-like sound.

Desmond pressed his hand over his mouth to keep the sob in, and sat there alone until they turned the corner.

When Posy started school, he asked for the night shift so he could watch, from behind a line of trees across from the gates, as she walked in holding her mother’s hand.

He never once crossed the street.

The not-crossing was its own kind of love, though it would have looked like nothing to anyone who saw him there — just a tired man in a parked truck, or half-hidden in the trees, watching a child he had no part in.