And then, instead of hiding the watch under her pillow the way she always did, she reached over and set it on my nightstand, in the open, and left it there.

I didn’t understand, that first time, what the watch meant to her, and I didn’t ask.

But I came to understand it.

That watch was the instrument of her one great act of disobedience — the thing she had used to break her mother’s rule and call for help — and some part of her had been guarding it ever since, keeping it hidden, sleeping with it under her pillow like a soldier keeps a weapon close, as though at any moment she might need it again and have to reach for it in the dark.

It was the object through which she had discovered she had a voice, and she had been holding onto it the way you hold onto the one thing that once saved your life.

And that night, for the first time, she set it down in the open, on my nightstand, in the light, where anyone could see it — and left it there, and went to sleep without it in her hand.