That is a legacy.

And I have thought a great deal, since, about what a legacy actually is, because I used to imagine it was a grand thing — a fortune, a name, a company handed down, the sort of thing the Vances had and fought over and nearly destroyed each other for.

That is what my husband thought a legacy was, and it made him a thief.

But my mother, who left me no fortune and no name that opened any doors, left me the only inheritance that turned out to matter, and it was not money.

It was character, made durable.

It was the residue of who she had been, converted into an act that outlived her.