She had spent ten years constructing the belief that this family was permanent.

And in one afternoon she found out it wasn’t — because of something she had done, which she had done knowingly and at length, and which does not change one single thing about what it meant to a girl who had learned at nine years old that people give you back.

I have never been able to make those two facts sit down next to each other, and I’ve stopped trying to.

Wendy told Luca he was welcome in her house and Chloe was not.