Emma had not come to me the conventional way, and I will not pretend that path was simple, but she had come to me completely, and she was, in every way that mattered, entirely mine.

And there is something about a happy child that refutes a cruel man more thoroughly than any argument could.

Marcus had predicted my desolation.

And here was living proof of its opposite, a bright, loved, laughing girl who called me Mommy and had, apparently, been looking everywhere for me, a child whose very existence announced that the future Marcus had wished on me had not arrived, that I had built, instead, a life overflowing with exactly the things he swore I had forfeited.

He looked at Emma and saw the collapse of his entire prophecy.