Melody Lynch nodded in wholehearted agreement. She had grown up in a healthy family; her father was stern, her mother loving, and though her brother could be unreliable at times, he would always stand in front of her to shield her from the storm if anything ever happened.
Most of the time, she didn't need her parents' or her brother's protection at all. But sometimes, what mattered most in a family wasn't the outcome, but the gesture.
People like Mr. Gallagher—cowards who hid behind women in public like turtles in their shells, yet acted like the imperious head of the household at home—were the exact type of good-for-nothing she despised most.
