“Goodnight, Mommy,” she whispered.

“We’ll come back on Sunday.”

Then she took my hand.

Her fingers wrapped around mine, warm and certain and completely without fear.

“Ready to go home, Grandma?” she asked, looking up at me with clear bright eyes.

“Ready, sweetheart,” I said.

We walked down the hillside together, Reyes falling into step on the other side of her, as the first stars came out over the darkening hills.

The thing that had come for my family had taken my daughter, but it had not managed to break us.

Tessa was not the terror of that chapel anymore, and she was not the cruelty of the man who had tried to erase her.

She was the warmth of a sunlit garden, and the birds that would nest in that oak come spring, and the bright brave spirit of the little girl walking between us, holding both our hands.

I breathed in the clean cold autumn air, and I stepped forward into whatever came next — knowing that love had held, and the truth had held, and my granddaughter was safe, and would stay that way, for the rest of my life and long after.