Roderick had stood over Blythe’s first breath and called her an exclusion, a household matter, a girl who would suit my life better than his.

A man does not say that in a moment of madness.

He says it because it is what he believes, and belief like that does not dissolve in a prison cell; it only learns to perform contrition when performance becomes useful.

I would not hand my daughter, at five or ten or fifteen, to a man capable of weighing her worth against a son’s and finding her wanting, and trust him not to let her feel it.

Some doors you keep closed not because you cannot forgive, but because you love the person on your side of them too much to risk what stands on the other.