"I want Daddy to tuck."
"I'll get him."
Jason came up the stairs like a man aging in a single flight. In the doorway he looked at Rachel, a question about whether the room was safe for him. She nodded and moved aside. He sat where she had sat. Sophie climbed immediately into the certainty of his chest, and he held her with his chin on her hair and his eyes closed. Rachel, standing by the dresser, saw the whole history of his fatherhood in the way his hand spread across Sophie's back: the night feeds, the fever at two, the first day of kindergarten when he had pretended his eyes were red from the wind. She had called this man gone in every way that mattered. The sentence shamed her so completely she had to look at the dolphin instead.
"Lights out, engineer," he said, their old joke, because Sophie liked to know how things worked. "Sharks are off duty."
"Are you and Mommy divorced now?" The question was muffled by his shirt.
"No," Jason said. He did not look at Rachel for permission. "We are not divorced. We are having a very hard night. Grown-ups can have a hard night and still be your parents in the morning. That's the job. We're keeping the job."