“She gave me my mother,” I said, when I could finally speak, looking over at Evelyn, who was weeping quietly with her hand pressed to her mouth.

“She gave me back my mother.

She gave us our whole life.” And Sarah, her own eyes wet, reached over and squeezed my shoulder and said, “You gave her more joy in six months than she’d known in twenty years, Julian.

You gave her a reason to wake up in the morning.

Never forget that you did that.

I have held onto those words, and onto the photograph, through every hard day since, because there is a particular doubt that a story like mine can leave behind if you let it.

The doubt goes like this: it started with a lie, and it ended with a fortune, and so perhaps, somewhere underneath, I was exactly the mercenary I feared I was, and the love was just a story I told to feel better about the money.