One of them I had chosen and paid for two years ago, in the worst week of my life, and it bore my mother’s name.

Claire Vance, it read, and the years of her too-short life.

The other was new, the carving still crisp and pale, and it bore my father’s name.

Julian Edward Vance.

And beneath his name, at my own request, the stonecutter had carved a single line, five words that I had chosen because they were the truest thing I knew how to say about the man.

He brought his daughter home.