Every day, in that house, they were absorbing lessons no one was consciously teaching them.

Sophia, at nine, had already started to make herself agreeable in the particular way girls learn to when they sense they’re on probation — quick to please, quick to apologize, watching her father’s face for the weather.

Lucia was younger and still asked her honest questions out loud, but she wouldn’t for much longer; the questions get trained out of you.

I could stay, and give them a home with a father in it, and let them grow up fluent in the language of being not-quite-enough.