She had made her love legally permanent, had built it to withstand exactly the assault her son had thrown at it, and it had held.

There was a lesson in that too, one I have thought about often since.

Love, on its own, is not always enough to protect the people we love; the world is full of tender feelings that came to nothing because no one did the unglamorous work of making them real and durable.

What made Nora’s love different was that she had not stopped at feeling it.

She had gone to an attorney.