Posture corrections at dinner. Comments about tone. Little nicks you only notice if you’re the one bleeding from them. Jesse learned the rhythm and mirrored it in eye rolls and stage whispers.

I asked Emily, here and there, if everything was okay. She’d give me the smile she learned after her mother died. “I’m fine, Dad.” A father knows when a kid is protecting him.

Time did what it does. Emily went to college, married a good man, and now she’s twenty-five and seven months pregnant with my first grandchild. I set up a new bed in the guest room just for her visits, put a crib in the corner. It made me stupidly happy to tighten those tiny screws.

Last week I was overseas for work. Meetings ended early. I didn’t tell anyone; I wanted the small pleasure of my own front