Because you do not accept the people you love.

You do not tolerate a child the way you tolerate a long commute or a difficult coworker.

Love is not acceptance grudgingly extended and privately resented; that is endurance, and Pamela had just told me, in her own furious words, that she had never loved Hannah or me at all.

She had endured us.

She had tolerated my daughter as a burden to be carried until the wedding made it safe to set down.

“You never truly accepted my daughter,” I told her plainly.