And they were in me, in the shape their love had made of me, in every choice I would make for the rest of my life.

My children were seven and four when they died.

But the good their memory would do in the world had no end that I could see, and would go on, and on, long after everyone who had failed to mourn them was themselves forgotten.

That was the quiet, protected world I had built to hold their memory, and it was larger and more lasting than anything my father’s stolen fortune could ever have been.

For the first time in six months, I could breathe without pain in my chest.