She managed that trust for years with a scrupulous, loving care, treating every dollar of it as the sacred thing it was, my sister’s security, protected at last by someone who actually loved her.

Between Gabriel and Aunt Beverly, my sister ended up surrounded, in the end, by a family entirely of people who had chosen her.

And I have come to believe that a family of people who choose you is worth infinitely more than a family of people who were merely assigned to you and found you inconvenient.

Word of what my parents had tried to do traveled through the family faster than either of them expected.

The invitations stopped arriving at their door.