And when I directed the settlement into the foundation, I was not giving money away.

I was completing the last parental act Jonathan and I had begun three years earlier — extending the protection we had wanted for Samuel and Charlotte outward, to children we would never meet, because the children we had meant to protect were beyond protecting now.

It was the final thing I could do as their mother, and the final thing I could do as Jonathan’s wife: to take the love that had made us a family, the love that had written those wills, and refuse to let it die with the people it was written for.

My father wanted the money for his debts.