“Then take me with you.

I won’t say a word to anyone.

I just want to be near my son.”

It is worth pausing on what happened inside her in that moment, because it was the hinge the whole rescue turned on, and it was not the wire or the officers or the crowbar that finally freed her.

It was Radley’s answer.

For six years the lie that held her had been aimed at her guilt — you are a killer, you deserve this, staying hidden protects your son. Every chain Radley had forged ran through her love for Percy; she had endured the dark because she believed the dark was the price of keeping her boy safe from the truth of what she’d done.