On the other side, a woman who shared none of my blood, who had entered my family only by marriage a few years before, and who, when everything was taken from her, chose to fight for her life rather than lie down and quit.

If those two facts do not settle, once and for all, what family actually is, then the word has no meaning at all.

Blood is an accident.

It is a thing that happens to you, not a thing you do.

You do not choose your mother or your sister; they are simply assigned to you, and the culture then insists that this assignment creates a sacred, unbreakable obligation, no matter how those people actually treat you.

And I no longer believe that.