If it was real there, it was real.

That was what I asked him for, and to his eternal credit, the man did not argue that his money should be enough to satisfy me.

He understood.

He had lost me once to paperwork that treated a child as a thing to be moved; he was not going to win me back by treating me as a fortune to be conferred.

He let me be nobody until I was ready.

It is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me, and it is the reason that when I finally did let myself be his daughter, I did it without a single doubt.