In the weeks after the funeral, quietly, with Adrian’s sister Diane — a lawyer, and the one person from either family besides Aunt Ruth who had stood by me without being asked — I had put my affairs in order.

I had rewritten my will.

I had revoked every emergency contact that connected any of them to me.

I had removed their names, every one, from the family trust that Adrian and I had built years ago for Maya and Rowan.

I did all of this with Diane, and I want to say something about her, and about what those months taught me concerning the word family, because I had gotten it wrong my entire life.

I had believed, without ever examining it, that family was blood — that the people you were born to had a claim on you that had to be honored simply because of how you were made, and that this claim ran deeper than anything you could choose.