Alex would teach it to his children, he decided, as they grew: that they owed no one their love merely for being related to them, and were owed no one’s love merely for the same, and that the only bonds that mattered were the ones built, deliberately, by people who kept showing up.

It was the opposite of everything he had been raised to believe.

It was, he was certain now, the truth.

It took Beatrice months to swallow her pride enough to accept those terms.

When she finally met the quadruplets, at a neutral community center, there were no cinematic hugs, no tearful reconciliation, no music swelling.

There were only four small children, meeting an old woman, with the same clear-eyed lack of sentiment they brought to everything.

Leo asked her why she had taken so long to visit.