She has always been able to do that, take a thing that was meant to hurt her and hold it up to the light until it becomes something else.

I think she gets it from Brandon.

I know she didn’t get it from Gene’s side of the family, where things are only ever what the label says they are.

What I want you to take from all of this, if you take anything, is the thing it took me three years and one gold-dressed Christmas morning to finally understand: that a child’s sense of whether she is wanted is the most precious and most fragile thing there is, and that the people who tell you blood is thicker than everything are usually the people counting on blood to excuse the ways they’ve failed to actually love you.

Blood is not the thing.