People always assume that is what an inheritance is, a sum, a windfall, a softening of life.

What my mother gave me was heavier than money and harder to carry: a standard, and the names and faces of the people who depended on my meeting it.

On the worst days of the years that followed I would feel the weight of that handing like a hand on the back of my neck, and on the best days I would feel it like a hand holding mine.

Damian thought he had married a decorative wife.