But I had complete power over what the next twelve, and all the ones after, were going to teach them.

I closed the doors to the garden and stood a while listening to them laugh out there in the Spanish afternoon, and I thought: a house can be lost.

A marriage can end.

A fortune can move from one set of hands to another.

But no child should ever have to grow up believing they needed to be born someone else to deserve the love of their own family.

That much, at least, I could make certain of.