It is the kind of sound that makes everyone nearby want to protect the person making it.

Margot lost her mother when she was only two.

She doesn’t really remember Phoebe.

She knows her through photographs.

Through bedtime stories.

Through the little comments I make whenever something reminds me of her.

“Your mother loved this.”

“Your mother used to say that.”

“Your mother once did the exact same thing.”

I never wanted Phoebe to become some mysterious figure Margot was afraid to ask about.

I wanted her mother to remain a real person in her life.

For three years, Emmett and I worked together to make sure that happened.

And I was not about to let anyone undo it.

Emmett had been twenty-eight when Phoebe died.

They had only been married three years.

Suddenly, he was a widower, a single father, and the son-in-law of a man who had just buried his only daughter.

We could easily have allowed grief to separate us.

Instead, we became closer.

He called me when Margot was sick and he couldn’t leave work.

I called him when something happened that Phoebe would have found funny.

We created Sunday dinners because I once read that rituals helped grieving children, and I decided Margot deserved as many steady things in her life as possible.

Emmett was a good father.

He still is.

He made mistakes, of course.

So did I.

There is no instruction manual for raising a little girl while everyone around her is grieving.

But Emmett never disappeared.