She kept me alive.

Every hard, closed, self-sufficient instinct the system built into me was what let me endure a childhood without love, a marriage that was a trap, a courtroom that had been bought against me.

She got me here.

But she was built for surviving, and surviving is a thing you do when you have no other options, and I have options now.

So I am learning, slowly, to be something the girl in the group homes never got to be — not merely someone who withstands what is done to her, but someone who decides what happens next.

Rafferty will never know the stillness I learned.