“You sound different.”

“Is that good?”

“It sounds less like you’re performing for a jury.”

I had started to learn that accountability was not a single speech.

It was returning to the same uncomfortable truth when the microphones were turned off.

Hannah had meanwhile resumed brief visits to her old community garden, accompanied by Naomi when headaches allowed.

Paige showed me a photograph Hannah had authorized her to share: rows of sleeping winter beds and Hannah smiling faintly beneath a knitted hat.

I wanted to tell her how proud I was.