I had driven through the night, and in doing so had become her family, though the blood ran the same in both of us.

Blood had made him her son.

Only love had made me hers.

I want to add one more thing about this, because it is the lesson I have carried furthest from that year, and it changed how I understand every relationship I have.

The comforting lie in blood is thicker than water is that it lets us off the hook.

If loyalty is automatic, inherited, owed by biology, then we do not have to earn it, do not have to demonstrate it, can treat the people we are related to however we like and still count on the bond holding, because the bond is supposedly made of something more permanent than behavior.