“A monumental decision such as starting a family requires persuasive dissertations, licences, spreadsheets and field research. That's what I assumed until one night when we were lying in bed and, if I recall correctly, I asked Tracy if we were ready to have a family now, and she said sure. That was it.”

“Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.'Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said.She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.'...Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.”

“I came running down the stairs that morning, like it was Christmas. My parents were already up. In my family, presents never waited; they were there upon waking. Our family has a problem with what they called delayed gratification. We want what we want when we want it, and we always want it now.”

“I knew now that we were never going to be a proper family again.”

“We rode through the night. No food offered, no water provided. They raided town after town until we finally reached the shore. There, we were tied to one another and driven like cattle onto a ship. They made sure to split us up. No families were permitted to be together. That would have shown a sense of humanity and these men, these slavers, had none.”

“One night when we were lying under the stars together she pointed to this beaming bright star beside the moon and said wherever she was in the world, whether we were together or apart, that I should remember her with that star because it would always be there-that it was her with me.”