For five years, in the very back of my mind, in the place where my old jealousy had never entirely died, a small doubt had lived: the doubt that Gabriel’s love for my sister was somehow lesser, an affection rather than a passion, a dutiful fondness rather than the real, consuming thing.

I had never fully articulated the doubt even to myself, but it was there, a faint unwillingness to believe that what he felt for Gemma was the same order of love that people wrote songs about.

And that doubt died, completely and forever, in that waiting room, watching a grown man come apart at the seams over the possibility of losing her.

You cannot fake that.