He was there so that she would never again have to feel alone while she fought for herself.

There is a world of difference between those two things, and Caleb, who understood his daughter better than anyone alive, knew exactly which one she needed.

I want to linger on the restraint of it, because restraint is not a thing our culture celebrates and it should be.

It would have been so easy, and so natural, for Caleb to take over in that moment.

His child was standing before the woman who had tormented her, holding the instrument of a boundary he had built, and every protective instinct in him must have been roaring at him to step forward, to take the box, to say the words himself, to shield her from the confrontation.