And slowly, in the keeping of it, something in me began, without my noticing, to harden into resolve.

It is worth saying what that resolve actually was, because it was not what people might assume.

It was not, at its root, revenge.

Revenge is hot, and impatient, and mostly about the person you want to hurt.

What formed in me over those six silent months was something colder and more durable and entirely about the people I had lost: a slow, gathering, absolute determination that my family’s deaths would mean something, and that the people who had abandoned me would have no part in whatever that meaning turned out to be.

Grief, when it is not softened by the presence of others, when you are left entirely alone to bear it, does something to a person.