It was the visible proof of everything I had built, the thing people saw when they said my name, and losing it felt, in the abstract, like it should have felt like losing myself.

And it did not, and the not-feeling taught me where my worth had been living all along all along.

It had never been in the house.

The house was only ever a receipt — a record of worth that lived in me, in my mind and my work and my judgment and my will.

A receipt can be sold.

The thing it records cannot, because the thing it records is not a possession at all; it is a capacity, and I carried it out of that estate in the rain along with my daughter, fully intact, ready to build again anywhere I chose.

That is the difference between what Luca had and what I had.