He had been there, my father, at eleven o’clock on the worst night, standing in his own foyer with the troopers; he had been there every day since.

Esme would grow up knowing exactly what a man who loves you actually looks like, and she would never mistake the other kind for it, because she would have the real thing in her bones from the beginning.

She carried my name — Fairchild — and she would grow up inside the plain, unshakable fact of it: told the truth, kept safe, provided for beyond any question.

She would never live one day of her life having her worth weighed against the accident of her sex.