I signed it to save her, Nora.

And then I spent five years making sure the life I gave her was a real one, and a happy one, and entirely her own.” I sat on that cold floor and understood, at last, the full and terrible shape of what my best friend had done, and what my parents had tried to do, and I did not know whether to weep with grief or with a fierce and overwhelming love.

I have turned Gabriel’s choice over in my mind more times than I can count, examined it from every angle, and it only ever grows more remarkable.

Consider what he actually did, at seventeen.