Every miracle is the suffrage of heaven to the truth of a doctrine.

All the portraits that hang on the walls of the living room are, I realize, of my mother's family: miniatures of her great-aunts in Victorian bustles and elaborate feathered hats; a gilt-framed oil of her great-great-great-uncle as a boy in pastoral England, wearing a gold riding coat over white jodhpurs and sitting astride a white steed, a King Charles spaniel yapping at them from the foreground of the canvas.

Journalists and pols were cozier then. President Kennedy sipped 1945 Lafite-Rothschild at the Alsops' Georgetown home, and the Alsops dined at the White House.

Donna became autocratic the day Daniel born, and she realized she had absolute power over another human being.