And it carried, though I did not know it yet, a quiet resolve that had already hardened into a plan, tucked away in the side pocket of a child’s overnight bag, waiting to see whether it would be needed.

Caleb hoped, I think, right up until the last moment, that it would not be.

He knew his mother far too well to actually believe that.

I think about that kneeling moment in the snow more than almost any other part of that Christmas, because it holds the whole of who Caleb was in a single image.

A grown man in his good holiday clothes, down on one knee in the cold, cleaning a scuff off a seven-year-old’s shoe so that she might feel, for one day, that she was worth the trouble of looking perfect.

It was such a small thing.