When Luca changed that keypad, he was certain he had taken my home, because he could not tell the difference between the two, because to him the grand estate was the prize, the status, the whole point.

And that is exactly why he could take the house and lose everything, while I could lose the house and keep everything that mattered.

He locked me out of a structure.

He could not lock me out of my own daughter, or my own competence, or my own worth, or my sister’s love, or the small safe honest life I was already, in that moment in the rain, deciding to build.

Those were my actual home, and they had been coming with me the entire time, asleep in a pink blanket against my chest.