They were not a trigger, or a key, or a move in anyone’s game.

They were two small boys who had been wanted, fiercely and truly, by at least one of the two people who made them — and the fact that their father had held a ledger where I had held a hope did not change, by one degree, what they were to me.

I would not let the cold thing he had done reach forward and define them.

They were wanted.

I made sure, from that night on, that this was the only origin story they would ever know, and it happens also to be the true one.

Chapter 10 — The Valuation