That is what a mother is, in the end — not a person who provides a house, but a person who is one, whose arms are the address a child can always come back to.

Grace had a house waiting, painted green, with a crib.

But she did not truly come home until she was placed against the chest of a woman who had decided, before Grace was even born, that there was no version of the world in which she would ever be let go.

The house was where they would live.

Lauren was where Grace belonged.

They are not the same thing, and the difference is the whole of what love means.