It had been inverted; the thing she trusted was the thing hunting her; the arms she felt secure in were the arms that would apply the patch.

And so when I say that she is finally safe now, I mean something more than the ordinary word.

I mean that the terrible gap between her feeling of safety and the fact of it has finally closed — that for the first time in years, perhaps in decades, the security she feels is real, matches the world, is not a lethal illusion maintained by the very person endangering her.

That is a rarer and more precious thing than the safety most of us walk around inside, because she knows, now, exactly what it is worth, having lived so long without it while believing she had it.