The scar had already given me everything it was ever going to give me, which was the knowledge that I was the kind of person who runs into fires.

That knowledge was mine, complete, unrepayable, and it did not require my sister’s gratitude to be true.

She never asked me to save her.

I saved her anyway, and asked for nothing, and getting nothing did not diminish it.

That is not the story of a fool.

That is the story of the only genuinely generous person in that entire family, and I stopped, that night, being ashamed of her too.

Chapter 17 — Freedom, Not Satisfaction