What those twenty years had taught her was not that things matter, but exactly how little they do.

She had lived at the very bottom of the world, with nothing, and she had discovered there what the people at the top so often never learn: that a human being does not actually need very much to be happy, and that almost none of what she needs can be bought.

She did not want designer clothes.

She wanted a daughter across the breakfast table.

She did not want jewelry.