Jude’s with the cold sun on my face, was not victory over Arthur at all.

It was grief, mostly, that Nora was gone, sharpened almost unbearably now by the knowledge of how completely she had loved me, and underneath the grief, threaded all through it, a gratitude so large I did not know where in myself to put it.

I had walked in that morning bracing for punishment.

I was walking out having been given a mother’s blessing by a woman who was not my mother, and the money in my pocket was the smallest part of it.

Chapter 18 — Bringing Her Home