I want to be honest about how hard those weeks were, because the temptation is to skip to the warm ending, and the truth is that the reunion was the hardest thing Sidonie did — harder, in some ways, than the six years, because in the gatehouse she had at least been able to imagine this moment as pure joy, and the reality was more complicated than joy.

Percy did not know her.

That was the thing no one could soften.

He had been six months old when they took her; he had no memory of her arms, her voice, the way she’d sung to him.

To him she was a woman from a photograph, suddenly present, being called his mother by all the adults he trusted, and a six-year-old cannot manufacture love on command any more than an adult can.

There were evenings he wanted his old routines and his old certainty and was furious that the world had rearranged itself.