And Marguerite — who had spent eleven years writing letters into a silence she thought was mine — set up education trusts for both children, untouchable and generous, so that whatever else happened, Piper and Callum would always have been claimed, on paper and in fact, by the family that had wanted them all along.

Chapter 16 — As Many Castles as You Want

The following summer, I sat on the wide porch of the Hilton Head house with a glass of iced tea going warm in my hand, and I watched the thing I had once been told could never happen.

Down on the shore the morning sun was scattering itself across the water in a million bright pieces.

Callum was down by the tide line, laughing — laughing, loose and unguarded, a sound I had gone years without hearing — as he helped his grandfather wrestle a beach-volleyball net into the sand.