When I got out of the truck, Daisy abandoned the butterfly and came flying at me with her arms out, and I caught her and swung her up onto my hip, and Mason came down the steps grinning.

“Did the judge say she can never come back?” he asked me — not frightened, just checking, the way you check that a door is locked before a trip.

I looked at him, at the brightness that had replaced the gray watchfulness in his face, and I told him the truth.

“She’s never coming back, buddy,” I said.

“It’s over.

She is never going to be able to hurt you or Daisy again, ever.

You don’t have to think about her anymore.” He nodded, and glanced once at the porch steps where he’d stood exhausted sixteen months before, and then it was gone from his face, and he was just a kid again.