What I was really doing was keeping my own discomfort at bay by letting a seven-year-old carry a burden that should have been mine.

Caleb, that Christmas, would show me a different way, a braver way, and part of what made it so humbling to watch was the recognition of how long I had chosen the cowardly one.

Chapter 3 — The Man Who Chose Her

If Beatrice was the coldest person in Chloe’s life, her son Caleb, my husband, was without any question the warmest, and the contrast between them was something I never stopped marveling at.

Caleb had come into Chloe’s life when she was four years old, and he had never once, not for a single day, treated her as a footnote, a complication, or an extra burden attached to loving me.