rented together on the other side of town.

Emma ran through the water in pink sandals, shrieking every time the spray hit her face.

The sky was bright, the grass smelled warm, and somewhere down the block another child was laughing too.

I sat on the patio with a glass of iced tea and watched her tip her head back into the sun.

There were no letters coming from prison anymore because the court had stopped them after the first batch.

There were no surprise visits, no holiday guilt campaigns, no relatives slipping messages under the door.

The people who had once insisted that blood entitled them to unlimited access no longer had any place in our lives at all.

Emma ran over, dripping and breathless, and asked whether she could have a popsicle before dinner.

Thomas pretended to consider it very seriously.

I told her yes.

She grinned, then paused and asked the question she had asked fewer and fewer times as the months passed.

Are we safe now?

I looked at my daughter, at the backyard gate latched shut, at the man beside me who had learned how to build something gentler out of wreckage, and I gave her the answer I had wanted to be certain of before I ever said it out loud.

Yes, baby.

We are.

And for the first time in a very long time, that was completely true.