My love for the child asleep in the crib, the child's need for me, for my vigilance, had made my life valuable in a way that even the most abundantly offered love, my parents', my brother's, even Tom's, had failed to do. Love was required of me now—to be given, not merely to be sought and returned.

Someone: A Novel (ed. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) - ISBN: 9781429969420