It was not a happy peace; it could not be, with what I now knew about my parents.

But it was the peace of a person who has finally been told the truth after years of living inside a lie, and who has discovered that the truth, however painful, is something you can stand on, whereas the comfortable lie was quicksand all along.

Now I knew what my family actually was: two parents who had tried to discard their daughter, one man who had given his youth to save her, and a sister who had understood all of it and chosen love.

It was not the family I had thought I had.