But I have watched my daughter grow, these six months, in a house full of light and pine and sea air, and I have learned the thing that Wendy never understood and never will: that a person is not made by the family they are born from, but by the family that raises them, holds them, chooses them, day after ordinary day.

Fiona has the Vance eyes, yes.

But she has never seen the Vance world, and never will.

She will grow up in a small coastal town where her father is gentle and unafraid, where her mother sings to her in the mornings, where the worst thing that has ever happened to her is a scraped knee.

She will learn kindness because kindness is what surrounds her.

She will learn safety because safety is what we have built for her.