She was going to be a mother.

Against every expectation anyone had ever laid on her, my Gemma was going to be somebody’s mom.

I have thought a great deal about the feeling I had at my sister’s milestones, the sense that they proved the world wrong, and I want to be careful with it, because it contains a trap I do not wish to fall into.

It is true that Gemma’s marriage and her motherhood proved wrong every cruel voice that had ever recited the list of things she could not do.