Not seized.

Given.

And that, in the end, was the whole difference between the family I had lost on that freezing morning and the smaller, truer one I was choosing, one asked-and-answered question at a time, to slowly let back in.

I do not know, as I write this, how far my mother and I will get, or whether my father will ever learn what she has learned, or whether my sister and I will ever again be anything to each other but a wound.

I have made my peace with not knowing.