Not about the incomprehensible fact of her betrayal.

She dragged her mind up through sedation and terror and grief to spell a word on a bedsheet, because she understood, even then, that catching him mattered more than her own suffering, and she was not going to let her suffering slow it down.

That is not softness.

That is a strength I do not know that I possess, and had never had the chance to see, because for thirty years the world had asked nothing of Jessi’s strength and so I had assumed it wasn’t there.

It was there.